The death of the manual transmission is still exaggerated, but it’s fair to say that your options are small if you’re looking for a new car in the U.S. with a stick shift. That’s doubly the case if you have neither appetite, nor budget, for a sports car with three pedals to play with. So, what’s the fresh-to-manuals driver looking to get to grips with their gears to pick, if they want something brand new off the forecourt?
Growing up in the U.K., learning to drive stick was the norm. In fact, if you take your driving test in the U.K. in an automatic car, you can’t then legally drive a manual. Passing your test in a manual, in contrast, allows you to drive both transmission types.
I took my test in a 5-speed Vauxhall Corsa (the curvaceous S93 version produced from 1993, a popular driving school choice at the time) that smelled of cigarettes, courtesy of a taciturn instructor with fingers stained nicotine-yellow. A long way, certainly, from the 2026 Mazda3 Hatchback, one of a handful of Mazda models still available with a manual option. If I was learning how to drive stick today, I know which of the two I’d choose.
Mazda offers six variations of the Mazda3 Hatch, but only one — the 2.5 S Premium, from $32,685 including $1,235 destination — comes as a manual. The six-speed is paired with front-wheel drive and a 2.5-liter inline-four with 186 horsepower. If you want all-wheel drive, you’ll need the 2.5 S Carbon Edition or the 2.5 Turbo Premium Plus; the latter gets a more potent turbocharged engine, with 250 hp if you splash out on 93 octane gas.
In an age where SUVs are increasingly the de-facto pick, Mazda’s hatchback remains a handsome and practical thing. Its teardrop shape wears the automaker’s now-iconic Soul Red paint well; its 20.1 cubic feet of cargo space is a mere 0.1 cu-ft behind that of the CX-30 crossover. The EPA says the hatchback should do 28 mpg combined, a point ahead of the all-wheel drive CX-30.
Dual-zone climate control, leather seats with heating up-front, a Bose 12-speaker audio system, and 8.8-inch infotainment with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are all standard on the 2.5 S Premium. But it was the stick shift that I was most curious about: after all, the manual transmission in Mazda’s MX-5 Miata could very well be my favorite on the market today. Does that carry over to a far more practical car?
Honestly, from a mechanical point of view, the Miata wouldn’t be a bad place in which to learn how to drive a manual. The throw of its stick is short; its clutch is near-perfectly weighted, communicative while not being exhausting in stop-and-go city traffic. Equally important, the MX-5’s powertrain rewards frequent stirring. There’s not enough torque to make pulling out of every corner a simple matter of ignoring the gear and hitting the gas: you need to get into the swing of shifting in order to keep the little Mazda in its most effective power band.
All the same, learning three pedals in a car that can instantly disappear into the blind spot of every full-size pickup around you would add an extra layer of stress to the process. The Mazda3 isn’t huge, but it’s definitely better-scaled for visibility on the average American road.
Though not quite as sublime as the gearbox in the MX-5, there’s plenty to like from the driver’s seat in the Mazda3. The clutch pedal is light and easy to modulate; the stick’s throw, though not quite so notchy as in the Miata, feels precise and yet forgiving. In some manual cars, you figure from the get-go they were designed with maximum sporting potential in mind — even if that makes them less pleasant to live with day to day. The Mazda3 escapes such singular focus.
In fact, the manual Mazda is very nearly as easy to drive as its automatic sibling. It’s definitely more fun. No, it’s not as asphalt-hugging as that Miata, but the center of gravity feels lower than in a crossover, and that — together with some judicious churning of the gearbox — makes for a nimble little thing in the corners. It isn’t a hot hatch (nor billed as one) but you definitely feel like you’re getting to use each and every one of those 186 horses you paid for.
One of the trickiest aspects of learning how to shift gears manually is handling hill starts. Even when you think you’ve got balancing the clutch and gas pedal down to a fine art — holding the car steady yet poised to surge forward — there’s nothing quite like that sensation of the car rolling backwards to jettison everything you’ve learned from your brain. Someone hugging your bumper only makes it more stressful.
Common in many cars these days is Auto Brake Hold (ABH). It does what the name suggests: keeping the brakes on, even if you lift your foot off the pedal. In an automatic car, that means no creeping forward while you’re waiting at the lights. In a manual, it gives you time to shift your foot from the brake to the clutch, without worrying that the car will move while you do so. The brakes automatically release when you hit the gas.
To be clear, figuring out how to balance the clutch and the brake is an essential part of learning how to drive a manual car, and relying on tech like Auto Brake Hold to skip that learning is a bad idea. Nonetheless, as a way to assuage anxiety in particularly tricky situations — or to more safely experiment with finding that clutch bite point consistently — ABH definitely makes the Mazda3 feel more driver-friendly.
That’s a big deal, because having spoken to a lot of (predominantly American) drivers about why they don’t learn to drive a manual car, the fact it can be an overwhelming prospect is often the first reason given. Which I understand, but also think is a shame, because while stick shifts on new cars may be a dying breed, there are plenty of enthusiast-friendly (or just plain cheap) used cars with three pedals out there.
In short, while the 2026 Mazda3 certainly excels as a learner car for those getting to grips with dancing in the footwell, the bigger takeaway is that more people would likely have more fun if they were familiar with more than just an automatic. And who knows, maybe that urban legend about manuals being less alluring to car thieves is true, too.

source