Manuals left in the dust

Lily Kingston failed in her bid for a manual. Photo / Herald on Sunday

Shopping around for a manual vehicle could become a thing of the past as automatics take over the market.

Figures from the Motor Industry Association show automatic transmission vehicles are swamping manuals in new car sales. The trend is matched in the used-car market.

So far this year just 3507 new cars sold have been manuals compared with 23,304 automatics.

Last year, 42,598 cars sold were automatic compared with 8145 manuals or just 15 per cent of the new car market.

The sales mark a major change from 15 years ago when automatic transmissions were regarded as a potential financial liability if something went wrong.

And those who drove automatics were considered to be motoring's elite.

But Toyota New Zealand service operations manager Steve Liddall said automatics had shaken off those reputations.

They were as reliable as a manual gearbox and the cost of repairs was no different.

Improvements to automatic transmissions also made them more fuel efficient, ruling out the advantage of greater fuel efficiency that manual cars were supposed to have.

Now a Toyota Corolla 4-speed automatic uses about 7.7 litres of petrol per 100km, while a manual in the same model is only slightly more efficient at 7.4 litres.

Moyes service manager Kam Nadan said it was not uncommon to service automatic taxis with 500,000km on the clock that did not need any work on the transmission.

Nadan said if you did need to repair an automatic clutch it would cost around $2500, almost the same as repairing a manual clutch at $2200.

Automobile Association motoring and technical writer Andrew Bayliss said the big consumer swing to automatics was because of convenience.

"Particularly for people driving in cities and on motorways with stop-start traffic," he said.

The rise in popularity of automatics also came from the fact that the majority of our used cars were imported from Japan, a car market that had virtually no manual cars, Bayliss said. And the drive to automatics would continue, said AA driving instructor Karen Dixon.

The AA processes four out of every five driver licensing transactions in New Zealand every year, or about 100,000 people.

Dixon said that when she started as an instructor in 2004, 85 per cent of her students were learning to drive in a manual. Now it is only 35 per cent and 65 per cent are learning in automatics.

Turners Auctions in Penrose auctioned 55 cars on Monday, of which only nine were manual. At the Wednesday auction, 130 of the 160 vehicles auctioned were automatics.

Auctioneer Chris Broadhurst said when he was growing up in Taupo and selling cars as a teenager, automatics were considered the poor cousin to manuals.

Now manual cars were so rare at auctions he made a song and dance about them.

When buying a secondhand car, Broadhurst recommended models that had been made from 1998 onwards for best value and reliability.

"If you're driving around Auckland and you want to be comfortable, you just buy an automatic."

Hard road to track down a rare ride

Lily Kingston is of a generation where manual cars are a rare breed, but the 21-year-old is determined to get one.

Despite having learned to drive in an automatic, and the fact her first car is an automatic Nissan Lucino hatchback, she had her eye on a manual at Wednesday's car auction at Turners.

However, the pickings were slim.

Lily, along with her father Toby, bid on one of only 13 manuals out of 160 cars at the auction.

The Mazda 6 wagon would have been perfect for Lily's skiing trips to Mt Ruapehu. She thought it would be more powerful on the mountains. "It had roof racks, a tow-bar and it was a wagon."

However, they pulled out of bidding for the car when the price reached $13,600 and now she is back to looking around again.

But, despite her aspirations, Lily has driven a manual only about 10 times. "I wanted to learn in a manual but my parents only had an automatic."

Toby said he moved to an automatic car a few years ago but, in the past, he had always had a manual.

He now has a Ford Mondeo automatic and was not looking back.

"Automatics were a lot more expensive in that time and I guess most of the cars around were manual."

"If you're sitting in traffic an automatic is fantastic."

anna.rushworth@hos.co.nz