I’m a purist when it comes to manual transmissions. If a car is or was available with a manual transmission from new, I wouldn’t buy it with an automatic, even if the automatic was cheaper or the better choice for reliability, fuel economy, or driver feedback (not that automatic gearboxes are usually more reliable than stick shifts). I simply love the feel and control that comes with rowing your own gears.
That choice is harder and harder to make these days for new car buyers, as the availability of manual transmissions dwindles. Out of the hundreds of new cars for sale in America, there are currently just 23 available with stick shifts. That number has only gone down in the past decade, but in a shocking twist, it could be growing by one.
According to the guy who runs the off-roading division at Jeep, the Gladiator pickup truck is actually getting its stick shift back, following its discontinuation a couple of years ago. I know, I’m just as surprised as you are.
The news comes from CarBuzz, which spoke with Aamir Ahmed, Jeep’s head of off-road and EVs at the company’s recent Easter Jeep Safari event. While talking about the Wrangler’s six-speed manual and its 100:1 crawl ratio (when equipped with the 4.88:1 axle), he dropped this bomb:
“We have another car that looks like a Wrangler that’s getting its manual back. Stay tuned.”
While Ahmed doesn’t come out and say it’s the Gladiator that’s getting its manual back, there’s only one Jeep in the current lineup that looks like the Wrangler and has previously had an available stick shift. Jeep killed off the manual Gladiator back in September 2024, telling Motor1 that the eight-speed auto paired to the Pentastar V6 “is chosen by most Gladiator owners today, and best matches the specific capability and expectations” of its customers.
In that statement to Motor1, Jeep pointed customers who desired a manual to look to the Wrangler, which has continued to offer a stick shift throughout its existence, to this day. To me, this suggested that the Gladiator wouldn’t be coming back any time soon, if ever.
Yet, here we are. Ahmed didn’t give a reason for the decision to CarBuzz, and my email to Jeep for some clarification has gone unanswered as of this writing. Of course, there’s plenty of room to speculate here. CarBuzz thinks the manual may have been dropped in 2024 to simplify production during the truck’s refresh that year, and it’s now just catching up to being able to offer the manual again.
They also considered the fact that Jeep no longer has to worry about stuff like fuel economy and fleet-wide EPA averages, since the federal government stopped issuing penalties to automakers that no longer meet those requirements. But the manual Gladiator achieved the same combined EPA rating as the eight-speed auto, so I don’t really buy that as a possible reason.
It’s entirely plausible that Jeep execs are just hardcore enthusiasts who want to see a Gladiator with three pedals on sale, bottom line be damned. CarBuzz did mention that Ahmend spoke fondly of the stick shift when it comes to off-roading, after all. Anything’s possible.
Either way, this makes me incredibly happy. It’s super-rare to see a manual car on sale from a brand at all at this point, much less to see a brand revive one from the dead after previously axing it from the lineup. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this happen in the decade I’ve been writing about cars, unless we’re talking about cars gaining a manual once they get heavily refreshed or replaced (cars like the BMW Z4 and the Toyota Supra come to mind).
The manual Gladiator’s return also means the Tacoma is no longer the only stick-shift truck you can buy. I’m sure this is terrible news for the extremely small sect of manual Tacoma owners who were planning to store their trucks in climate-controlled garages in the hopes they might one day explode in value.
Top graphic images: Jeep
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