Word comes from a friend more hip to the digital news churn than I'll ever be that the last five-speed Nissan manual transmission just rolled off an assembly line in Mexico.
The south-of-the-border part is important because of the company's 25-percent hit from the Trump tariffs. I admit I was once someone who enthusiastically railed against the bill of goods we were all sold with NAFTA, but the sourcing of car parts is so diffuse these days, what exactly is made where has become head-spinning in its complexity.
What appears to be a bigger problem is simply the unpopularity of this particular base model, as "manuals reportedly only accounted for 5% of Versa sales in 2024," The Drive, an online car magazine, posted on May 29. Yet the sticker price doesn't get any lower — 17 grand.
"As the manual Versa dies, it brings the five-speed manual transmission down with it."
Just when we need it the most.
Never mind the active, fun, coordinated foot-and-hand manipulation of clutch and stick shift as you A.J. Foyt it along the twisty backroads of the South Fork, this may be the only workable antidote to the epidemic of iPhoning while driving. "The devil makes work for idle hands," but maybe not if one's on the stick and one's on the wheel.
I know we're in an age of stupidity ascendant, but this distracting practice is not only out of control — coursing your country two-lane, speeding the interstate, try taking a gander through passing windshields or sidewise into driver's-side windows — it's not even subtle.
If we're supposed to wait for some nifty solution in which we shut the car door and enter a newly engineered interconnectivity dead zone, disabling any smartphone therein, that day will never come, if only because Big Tech is incentivized to do what's worse for us, not what's better.
With history as a guide, you could cite the progress made since the 1980s when it comes to Suffolk County's once-favorite pastime — driving drunk. Unfortunately, the task master was a hard one.
As my shop teacher at Bridgehampton High used to say, "Those trees don't move."