BMW's Fastest Cars Won't Use A Manual Transmission For Much Longer

For so many car enthusiasts, driving a car with a manual transmission is a distillation of their passions for all things automotive. Remove the human element, and the facts are pretty simple: stick shifts are slower, less economical, and more difficult to use than automatic transmissions. Moreover, they're hard to justify in today's automotive climate for a litany of reasons, as BMW M's CEO, Frank van Meel, points out. According to van Meel, there simply won't be a way to justify them soon.

van Meel...