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Why manual drivers are a rare breed in Australia
Is manual driving really going the way of the dinosaur? It might not be a shock to hear that as more of us choose cars with automatic transmissions, it’s rarer and rarer to come across a manual car in Australia.
Until around the 1960s, practically all cars on the road had a manual transmission. A Canadian steam engineer named Alfred Horner invented an automatic transmission using compressed air in 1921, and General Motors introduced the first hydraulic fluid automatic transmission in 1940. But it took some years for automatic transmissions to become common in popular cars.
Fast forward to today, and the vast majority of Aussie cars are automatic. Fewer than 4% of new cars now have a manual transmission in Australia. That’s a little over 40,000 vehicles! And here at Carma, just 5.2% of secondhand cars listed have manual transmissions at the time of writing.
So how common is it to still ‘drive stick’, and why are some people still loving their manual gearbox?
How many drivers are still getting a manual licence?
While there are no doubt higher proportions of manual licences in older generations, it helps to look at learner driver numbers to see what’s shifting in the world of manual vs automatic. Right around Australia, we see a similar pattern.
In NSW in 2022, just over one in 10 learner driving tests was in a manual car. Meanwhile in Victoria the figure was one in six. And in Queensland, the figure was closer to one in four, though even in this state automatic tests have been more and more common than manual every year since 2014. As an interesting side note – manual drivers were actually more likely to pass on their first test than automatic drivers, according to a 2023 BudgetDirect survey.
It’s easy to see there’s a kind of a cycle over time: as more automatic cars are purchased, fewer and fewer young drivers actually have access to a manual car that they can learn in. Which leads us to the question:
Who’s still buying manual transmission cars?
Of the few manual cars still bought new in Australia, here are some of the notable buyers:
Commercial users
The majority of manuals purchased today are commercial or utility vehicles. And this makes sense: farmers, mining companies and tradies can all benefit from vehicles that are known to be relatively simple and durable. Vehicle fleets could save a buck or two by choosing manual vehicles, and depending on the vehicle a manual transmission could provide greater control for rough terrain or heavy loads. So it’s no surprise that this category tops the list.
