Americans are a logical people. Most of them have two legs so to the average American it really doesn't make any sense for a car to have more than two pedals. They also have two hands, one to steer with and one to clasp a hamburger/Super Gulp/mobile phone/Beretta 92, so if a car is capable of changing its own gears then why the hell should the driver be bothered? He has other things to be doing. As a consequence of this undeniable logic, 95 percent of the cars Americans used to buy (right up to the point when the banks ran out of money) had automatic transmissions. We Europeans are a different breed, of course, relishing the satisfaction of a well-executed shift, topped off with a heel-toe throttle blip on downchanges and maybe even a little left-leg braking if we're really feeling Scandinavian. Automatics have their place in Europe, of course, but drivers' cars need manual gearboxes and a clutch pedal. End of story.
Unsurprisingly, then, we were all saddened to hear that the BMW M5 wasn't going to be offered with a manual gearbox when it was launched back in 2004. If ever a car deserved to be offered with three pedals it was the V10-powered ultimate driving machine but instead it got a seven-speed, single-clutch, self-shifting manual gearbox that was engineered without any consideration for smoothness whatsoever, whether you're ambling around town or going for it along the Nordschleife. It's the only real blot on the M5's sublime copybook and it would be enough to put me off buying one, truth be told.
Then BMW did something very strange. It engineered a six-speed manual gearbox... for the American market! Yes, the country that thinks the only use for the word "clutch" is to describe the pile of eggs about to be poured into its daily orgy of breakfast pancakes gets a manual transmission and three pedals while we "Yirripeens" are stuck with the clunky SMG 'box. Quite why BMW couldn't be bothered offering the manual in Europe I cannot fathom but the lunacy doesn't end there. In cars with the SMG transmission, the stability control can be turned off for tail-sliding amusement but the manual version has its stability control engaged all the time. You can wind it back to "Sport Mode", but it's always on – presumably to prevent over-eager Americans doing unintentional doughnuts every time they pull out of the driveway. What's also curious is that BMW doesn't put any pictures of the manual shifter on its media or consumer websites and are most insistent you will void the warranty if you take your car outside the USA – even as far as Canada. It's like some dirty little secret it doesn't want the world to know about.
So what you end up with is two imperfect cars where one, perfect, manual supersaloon with a switchable DSC system is so tantalisingly close I can almost smell the burnt clutch. Why BMW? Why would you tease us that way?
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