These Car Brands Are Still Trying To Keep The Manual Hot Hatch Alive

For most of the last several decades, a manual gearbox was the cheaper, more common option versus the automatic. Today, though, things have inverted, with the stick becoming more of a specialty item — and the best example of this is the hot hatch segment. If you count up the new cars available in the US mating performance with a clutch pedal in a hatch body, you only have three options — and all of them are Japanese. There's the Honda Civic Type R, the Acura Integra Type S, and the Toyota GR Corolla.

Acura is Honda's upmarket brand, so it makes sense that the Integra Type S rides on the Type R's platform. It even uses the same 2.0-liter turbocharged four. In other words, one company accounts for two of three manual hot hatches currently on sale here. Meanwhile, the GR Corolla comes out of Toyota's racing division, Gazoo Racing.

It's a sad state of affairs for manual hot hatch fans, and it feels stranger for one big reason: Volkswagen's absence. Volkswagen basically invented this particular format with the Golf GTI back in the 1970s, and yet, it still deleted the six-speed from both the GTI and the all-wheel-drive Golf R for the 2025 model year. You still get the dual-clutch automatic, though. Mini, the other brand people instinctively associate with tiny cars and three pedals, dropped the manual from the fun and feisty 2025 Cooper JCW and every other model it sells. So it's just three brands that truly sell manual hot hatches in the US today.

It's worth noting that Honda's position on the Civic Type R doesn't exist solely to keep a manual around. The thing is, the company never really built an automatic version of the car to begin with. The usual way a manual dies is with an automatic sitting beside it that eventually eats all of its market share — something that obviously can't happen here. So you get a $46,895 manual hatch alone, with no automatic variant, producing 315 horsepower from the 2.0-liter turbocharged VTEC 4-cylinder under the hood. With those horses, the car actually managed to pull the front-wheel-drive lap record at the Nürburgring, with a time of 7 minutes and 44.881 seconds.

If you're in the market for a slightly more premium version of the Civic Type R, Acura's Integra Type S exists just to fill that gap. It takes that engine to 320 horsepower, while also using nicer materials all around and offering sound deadening. With it, the price bumps up slightly as well, to roughly $53,400. Acura markets this car as a liftback rather than a hatchback because its tail is a little different. Where the Type R's rear cuts off abruptly in a traditional hatch style, the Type S's is stretched and sloped.

Toyota's GR Corolla, a turbo hatchback that shines with a stick, takes a unique approach here. It offers a 1.6-liter turbocharged inline-three engine, making 300 horsepower. The car also drives on all four wheels, giving it a unique characteristic. Starting at $39,920, it's also the cheapest way in.

The honorable mention here is a unique version of the GR Corolla called the Toyota GR Corolla GRMN, a limited-edition $64,360 version, which saw only 730 units built globally. Include this, and the total rises to four manual hatches you can buy in the US, even if the brand options are still three. There's a good reason for the lack of choices here, though. Despite the noise made by car enthusiasts, stick shifts now account for only 0.6% of new vehicles built for the American market, an all-time low.

There was some evidence of demand for manuals, though those were more of a loud minority. Back when Volkswagen announced the final year of the manual Golf GTI, orders for it accounted for 41% of total sales. A similar phenomenon was noted with the Mini too, as the manual was scrapped.

One hope for the market is Gen Z, whose enthusiasm briefly showed, with manual share in the American market rising from 0.9% in 2021 to 1.7% in 2023. Even then, it was too little, too late to bring about any sort of resurgence that automakers attempted to capitalize on.

One brand is truly going against the grain here by actually moving toward the segment. Subaru has confirmed three manual models for 2027, and one of them is actually a five-door performance hatch. The catch is that the announcement covered only the Japanese market, with no American launch on the horizon for now. If that changes, Americans will have four brand options.