ford CEO Jim Farley said the automaker will continue to produce the iconic rear-wheel drive mustang Drive a sports car with a manual transmission for as long as possible.
Speaking to Australian media including Daily Sparkz At the 2026 Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne, the Ford CEO said: “Without our cold, dead hands, we won’t have a manual Mustang.”
Mr. Farley is a well-known enthusiast and racer who also previously expressed his distaste for “all these generic, two-row crossovers that dominate our industry” and subsequently ended U.S. production of the Ford Escape – a rival to the Toyota RAV4 – in December 2025.
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In Melbourne, he also repeated his promise that the automaker would not build boring cars.
“I truly believe Ford best serves working people and enthusiastic drivers,” he said. “And increasingly both off-road and on-road, and I would like to say that at Ford we don’t have boring cars.”
The current Mustang GT Fastback (coupe), equipped with a 5.0 liter V8 petrol engine, is available with a six-speed manual or 10-speed automatic transmission, while the Mustang GT Convertible is only available with an automatic transmission in Australia, but is also available with a manual transmission in the United States.
The Mustang EcoBoost, powered by a turbocharged 2.3-litre four-cylinder petrol engine, is offered exclusively as a coupe in Australia. While the previous generation (S550) was available with a manual transmission, the current generation (S650) only offers an automatic transmission worldwide.
The comment comes as Ford expands its racing activities with the Mustang – which runs in the Australian Supercars category – as well as Ford’s new partnership with Red Bull in Formula 1 in 2026.
Mr Farley’s commitment to a “stick-shift” Mustang also comes just days after BMW M department boss Frank van Meel announced it Daily Sparkz The German company is not thinking about developing a new manual for its high-performance models.
There is currently a six-speed manual gearbox in several models, but the gearbox is not capable of handling the higher outputs found in more upscale M cars such as the CS range, which now includes an M2 CS, an M3 CS and an M4 CS.
A manual M2 and M3 (not CS) continue to be found in BMW showrooms in Australia and elsewhere.
“The (BMW) M2, for example, in the US still has a transmission ratio of about 50 percent for the manual transmission, but of course you have to stick to the maximum power that the transmission can handle.
“You can see that it will be quite difficult to develop a completely new transmission in the future because the market segment is quite small.”
“So we’re happy with the manuals we have, and we plan to keep them for the next few years – but in the future it’s probably going to be harder to keep manuals alive, especially over the next decade.”
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