PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. – As I strolled the big car shows and visited the various brand villas during Monterey Car Week in mid-August, trends converged. 

Auction prices for modern supercars surged as luxury automakers focused more and more on the higher-end consumer.

But one notable subtrend emerged among the newer, more exotic cars: the return of the manual transmission. 

At the very top of the market, manual transmission has become the height of fashion, as a cluster of seven-figure sports cars debuted with three pedals at the Quail event and the Pebble Beach Concept Lawn — a field meant for showcasing modern cars. My talks with various CEOs during the week highlighted why the trend may be here to stay (though it may not trickle down for the rest of us).

Rowing your own gears is back from extinction

In the US, the stick shift now accounts for barely 1% of new cars sold. Most mass-market brands have dropped it entirely, and a generation of drivers doesn’t know what a clutch pedal is. Some brands with sporty options, like Ford (F) with the Mustang, Mazda and its Miata, and Honda (HMC) with the Civic Type-R, are still offering a stick shift, but those numbers are falling too.

On the commuter car — or the “daily” — the manual is all but extinct, especially if you drive electric.

But an interesting thing happened a few weeks before the show. Ferrari (RACE) announced the (sort-of) return of a manual transmission.

The Italian brand announced a shift-by-wire system for its 12Cilindri that essentially ports on a manual transmission over a dual-clutch transmission that Ferrari currently uses, along with a clutch pedal. The car, called the 12Cilindri Manuale, mimics all the feel and action of a manual without really being one. And Ferrari fans are excited. 

On the heels of Ferrari’s move, British rival McLaren revealed the MCL 6GT concept at its brand house near Pebble Beach, fitted with what the company pointedly calls an “authentic manual,” its first since the legendary F1 of 1992. 

Over at the Quail event, Texas-based Hennessey unveiled the Blackbird, a naturally aspirated, screen-free “touring hypercar” with a six-speed gated manual, priced from $2.5 million and limited to 71 cars. It reportedly sold out within hours. 

On the same lawn, Gordon Murray Special Vehicles pulled the covers off the S1, a 690-PS, Cosworth-V12, six-speed manual supercar limited to 64 examples. 

Koenigsegg, the Swedish supercar maker that already offered a manual in some of its multimillion-dollar models, also chose Monterey to unveil the CCGT1, a 1,280-horsepower Megacar, limited to 70 cars, all presold, that can be optioned with a gated six-speed manual. 

The new car joined a nascent movement already well underway with Ferrari’s shift-by-wire 12Cilindri Manuale, Pagani’s ultra-exotic Utopia, Gordon Murray’s own T.50, and Aston Martin’s (ARGGY) beloved Valour and Valiant (owned by F1’s Fernando Alonso and celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey, respectively), which all featured manual transmissions.

Asked whether McLaren’s “authentic” label was a dig at Ferrari’s electronic setup, CEO Nick Collins gave the shortest answer of Monterey: “No,” he said, “but it’s definitely authentic.” 

The demand for a manual transmission car had been building for years. “We’ve had customers for a long time say, ‘Please do another manual.’ Some of the modern transmissions are incredible in their own right, but who doesn’t love a slick gear shift or a downshift, and the connection that brings,” Collins added.

No one explained the phenomenon better than Aston Martin CEO Adrian Hallmark, who has already run the numbers on it. 

“There’s been a huge amount of growth in the number of people who collect cars — it’s like a historical shift,” he said. “Combine that with the possible end of combustion [engines], and this eagerness to rediscover the purity of driving — authentic, analog, real cars.” 

That is why the Valour and Valiant were so popular. “They love anything that’s not retro and old, but is authentic and analog and real, and challenges you to be a better driver — or just the fun of a 12-cylinder engine with a manual box. It’s nuts. People like the incongruity of it, in the world of BEVs and everything else,” Hallmark said.

But there’s a catch. Even at the top, a manual return is far from certain, and some of the biggest luxury brands are still reluctant. 

Several of Monterey’s marquee reveals stuck with newer tech and transmissions. Hallmark’s own Monterey debut, the Valen — the most powerful front-engined car Aston has ever built — is an automatic. 

“All the cars we’ve done with manual gearboxes in the recent past had an electrical architecture that didn’t comply with the latest standards,” Hallmark said. “You have an ADAS [advanced driver assistance] system on our new cars — emergency braking assistance — that can only work with an auto box, because if the car automatically brakes to protect you and you’re in sixth gear, who’s changing the gear?” 

Reworking the electronics, Hallmark said, effectively amounts to a new architecture. “I’d never say never. But it can’t just be 100 gearboxes — the cost is so high it would never be economically viable for 150 cars. It has to be more.”

Lamborghini’s Stephan Winkelmann, who was at the helm when the company sold manual-transmission 6-speed Gallardos along with extremely raw (and downright scary) Murciélagos, announced that the new Revuelto SV will come with a dual-clutch automatic.

He wasn’t so hot on the return of the manual in supercars. “When the stick shift was still in the Gallardo and the Murciélago, they had very little demand,” Winkelmann said. “Now [the demand for manuals is more], but it’s a matter of things to buy, because it’s like [people prefer] the ICE cars — the last of a kind. But [manuals are] not planned [for Lamborghini] so far.”

Bentley introducing a manual transmission is the most unlikely. Asked what client response he’d need to see, CEO Frank-Steffen Walliser said there wasn’t any. 

“There’s zero demand from customers saying we want a manual gearbox,” he said. 

There are also technical issues to overcome. “You have a torque limitation, because a manual [with an engine] with more than 600 Newton meters [of torque] gets a little tricky, and the Bentley is 800 [Newton meters] or a thousand,” Walliser said. 

And then there’s heritage. “Bentley was never a manual company,” he added. “The last manual was in 1948. So no — and I’d also say it does not really fit the character.”

Bugatti CEO Mate Rimac — an enthusiast himself — left the door open, though he didn’t explicitly guarantee anything. 

“Absolutely, absolutely,” he said when asked if a manual could ever appear. “The Tourbillon is a completely new platform, much more adaptable and modular than the Chiron and Veyron. There will be many things we do on this platform.”

The divide that emerges is pretty clear. The manual’s true believers are the exotic and “bespoke” automakers such as McLaren, Hennessey, Gordon Murray, Pagani, and even Ferrari — building tiny runs of analog machines for collectors who prize the act of driving above the numbers. 

While the bigger luxury brands see the appeal — and may have some customers yearning for a more analog experience — regulation, torque concerns, economics, and, in some cases, heritage are holding them back.

There was, however, one exception priced in a bracket (almost) for the rest of us. 

Also debuting at Monterey, Porsche (P911.DE) reintroduced the six-speed manual to the 911 Carrera S. Dubbed the “manual package,” it offers a 473-horsepower, rear-drive, North America-exclusive answer to what it called overwhelming customer demand for the six-speed transmission, starting at $167,100. 

Good on Porsche for making the case that rowing your own gears doesn’t require seven figures. 

But that engagement, that analog feel of total control from the ballet of shifting gears and working the clutch pedal, is still going to cost you if you want one from an automaker not named Ford or Honda.

Pras Subramanian is Lead Auto Reporter for Yahoo Finance. You can follow him on X and on Instagram.

Click here for the latest stock market news and in-depth analysis, including events that move stocks

Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance