Audi ditches manual transmissions in US because nobody bought them
The A4 and the A5 were the last holdouts, but the take rate for the stick shift was hilariously low.
No more manual Audis in the US? Ah, shift.
Audi will ditch the manual-transmission options in the 2019 A4 and A5, Car and Driver reports. Those were the last vestiges of Audi's manual transmissions in the US, so every single new Audi that traverses our amber waves of grain from here on out will swap its own cogs. That's a bummer.
But behind (most) every business decision is a good reason, and Audi's got one. You see, nobody bought the darn things. According to Car and Driver, the manual-transmission take rate on the A4 was a paltry 5 percent. Thus, it was probably costing the company more money to import the cars than it made back by selling them. So it goes.
While the 2019 models might not carry the manual transmissions, C/D points out that the 2018s still have them, and there are still plenty of 2018s on dealer lots. If you want to snag up a stick-shift Audi before they disappear entirely, there should be some solid end-of-model-year sales kicking off in the next month or two, so not only will you get one of the last manual Audis in the US, you'll get it for a song (hopefully).
The 2019 Audi A4 offers up a few changes in addition to ditching the stick. There are slight adjustments to the front and rear bumper, but everything else is the same. Euro-spec A4s get a bit more kit, including two new S Line appearance packages.
