#2 - The Power of Three

For the last couple of years, car manufacturers have battled with their inner demons (aka accountants) to justify the need to maintain some form of manual gearbox in their most unique/driver focused models……and it’s been hard fought. Large working capital needs to develop and expand hybrid/EV platforms, ongoing changes to emissions regulations and standardisation of product/assembly lines have meant funds are frequently diverted away from the divisions responsible for creating the latest and greatest driving machines. What’s more, it’s showing no signs of abating.  Heck……it got so bad recently that even the good people at Porsche (in a questionable lapse of judgement) briefly created a GT3 in PDK only form…..those were dark days.

There is good news for both purists and investors alike however as a growing number of manufacturers are beginning to attribute value to the ongoing development and production of manual gearbox cars with a clutch pedal and in our view, it’s all thanks to the Porsche 911R.

You see, in the same dark days when you could only buy a “boggo” GT3 with flappy paddles, Porsche also decided to release a very limited run of the GT3…..less the big wing, plus the 4 litre engine out of the RS and most importantly, a manual gearbox. If you were one of the 991 loyal customers lucky enough to be given a build slot, 6 months to a year after receiving delivery, you likely had a man in a shiny suit (mine is currently at the dry cleaners) bidding you £400k+ or 3x your initial cost for that same car. Now if you decided to sell up at those lofty prices, I can only salute you because this experiment inadvertently opened a Pandora’s Box of problems for the demons (sorry I mean accountants) at Porsche.

While the elevated second hand prices for these cars could in part be blamed on excessive over-speculation given the 911R was at the time, the only 991 GT car to sport a manual box and potentially the last. The other more interesting and unavoidable fact was huge demand still existed from customers crying out for a manual gearbox model. This got both Porsche and its peers thinking about how best to service them. For Porsche, the answer was relatively simple…..they reintroduced a manual GT3 into the range for the 991 GT3.2 and even brought back the historic Touring version of the car which took away the large aero package to mirror that of the 911R. Unsurprisingly, 911R values have been softer since the reintroduction but the simple point we are trying to make is manufacturers want to/need to keep a manual gearbox in certain cars within their range…..and its not just Porsche.

At the beginning of May, Aston Martin, who historically have had a love/hate relationship with 3 pedals decided to not only equip their latest and greatest prodige, the Vantage AMR, with a dog leg manual (massive hats off for that one) but also promised to make the manual gearbox an option in the mainstream V8 Vantage from 2020 onwards. Whether this will reach any V12 Variant to spawn later down the production line is yet to be seen but the green roots for the manual gearbox resurgence are definitely there and it will be interesting to see which other manufactures take up the baton.

One manufacturer we would love to get back into the manual game again is Audi. You see, Audi have made some absolute corkers when it comes to manual performance cars over the years. The Audi RS4 B7, the R8 in either V8 or V10 form and even the tiny little A1 Quattro are all monumentally fun cars to drive. What’s more, with the latest 2WD drive variant of the R8, the RWS, Audi had a screaming opportunity to create a true manual drivers car and really take the fight to the Porsche GT3. But alas….they didn’t and the lukewarm response from the market for the auto only RWS highlights again the demand for manual performance cars at the moment. That said, from Audi’s stubbornness doth spawn a very interesting investment opportunity in the form of the 1st generation Audi R8 V10, which in manual form, is likely to be the last 3 pedal Audi supercar ever to be produced………and would you look at what we have in our inventory at the moment.

Happy Motoring,

 CC’s Investment Team