I will die on this hill, and happily, because the data is now standing on the hill next to me.
For two decades the industry told us the manual gearbox was dead. Slower than a dual-clutch. Worse for emissions. Nobody wants one. They were right about the first two and catastrophically wrong about the third, and the auction results are now the receipts.
Take more or less any enthusiast car offered with both a manual and an automatic in the same era — a Gallardo, a 997-generation 911, an F430, a V8 Vantage — and run the comparable sales. The manual cars are not selling for a *bit* more. On the right model they are selling for a different number entirely. The gap is frequently double-digit percentage, sometimes far more on the genuinely scarce manual variants.
Why this happens, mechanically and emotionally
Mechanically: the manuals were ordered in smaller numbers right when the market was being told to order flappy-paddle. Scarcity wasn't designed; it was an accident of fashion. Accidental scarcity is the best kind because nobody was speculating on it at the time.
Emotionally: the people with the money to move this market learned to drive on three pedals and are now buying their childhood back. That is not a trend. That is demography, and demography is the most reliable force in this entire game.
The actionable bit
This is exactly the sort of thing our Spec Premium engine exists to measure — not "manuals are nice" but "on *this* model, in *this* market, the manual is worth X% over the auto, computed from comparable sales, not vibes." It is one of the few genuinely durable, repeatable signals in collectible cars because it is anchored to something that cannot be manufactured retroactively: the build sheet.
A car with an automatic gearbox is a car. The same car with a manual is, increasingly, an appreciating asset with a clutch. Order accordingly, or buy accordingly, but do not ignore it — the market stopped ignoring it years ago.