The Future of the MINI Cooper Manual: What Ferrari’s 12Cilindri Manuale Just Proved

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Ferrari’s new manual is not a manual, and the journalists who have now driven it have largely stopped caring. The 12Cilindri Manuale puts a clutch pedal and an open metal gate back in a V12 Ferrari, yet underneath sits the same eight-speed dual-clutch found in every other 12Cilindri. For anyone who has spent two years mourning the MINI Cooper manual, that is the most interesting transmission story of 2026.

A manual that isn’t, reviewed as one that is

Ferrari calls the system Manuale By-Wire, engineered in Maranello by a team led by Valentin Marguet. The lever and pedal have no mechanical link to the gearbox. Sensors read both, and software tells the DCT’s clutch packs what to do, giving you six forward gears plus reverse. The car starts in automatic, and dipping the clutch below 70 km/h and selecting a gear hands control to you. As we noted in our original report on the Manuale, it is homologated as an automatic, a detail that matters later.

Ferrari Manuale

Ferrari Manuale

The question in July was whether it would feel like the real thing. The reviews are now in, and they are better than a “fake manual” has any right to expect. Top Gear went furthest, headlining its first drive “an all-time great manual”. It noted that the car lets you make mistakes, including slipping the clutch, stalling and kangaroo-hopping away. There is no rev-matching, though a sixth-to-first shift gets a small rev surge to protect the rear wheels.

CAR gave it five stars and argued the shift action is more enjoyable than many genuine manuals. Autocar said the brain accepts it as the real McCoy within minutes. Auto Express found itself using the V12 in ways the paddle-shift car never invites, and GTSpirit reported almost no learning curve for anyone who can drive a conventional manual.

The complaints are worth reading closely. CAR flagged the price, the roughly 43 mph limit for engaging manual mode and the lack of automatic rev-matching. Autocar noted you can’t powershift. Every one of those is about what the system declines to do, not about how it feels, which is a very different problem from the one most simulated gearboxes have.

We have been making this argument since 2015

None of this surprises us. We argued back then that nothing adds more to a MINI than a manual, even when the automatic was faster. Our 2018 notes on the JCW Countryman said the manual gave back so much engagement that it was hands down more enjoyable than a very good eight-speed. A year later we went further and claimed that even the worst manual MINI sold beat the best automatic.

Ferrari’s reviewers are now saying the same thing in different words. The third pedal changes what the driver is doing. You plan shifts before corners and choose the gear instead of requesting it. A paddle-shift car is fast, but a manual one is involving, and those are different virtues.

The MINI Cooper manual was never an engineering problem

The last mechanical manual MINI left Oxford in February 2024, and we reported at the time that the decision was regulatory, not about demand. More than 40 percent of F56 JCW hardtops sold in the US were manuals, and MINI USA was still lobbying internally to bring one back in late 2024.

Our ranking of every MINI transmission since 2001 put the Getrag GS6-59BG first. It is rated for roughly 435 lb-ft and only has to handle 236 in the F56 JCW, which is why we called it the best MINI manual ever. The Getrag family from the R56 generation took second and the R53 Cooper S box third. That hardware died because of testing methodology, not because it failed.

Here is where Ferrari’s approach gets interesting. A by-wire manual that is legally an automatic sidesteps the exact obstacle that killed the real one. And MINI already has a dual-clutch to build on, the 7DCT300 family that our ranking named the pick of the automatics. This is analysis, not a leak, but the pieces exist.

Porsche is filing patents, BMW is quiet

Porsche is the clearest follower. A European patent filing describes a dual-clutch with a clutch pedal and shifter, plus a mode that makes the lever behave like an H-pattern. It reportedly works with combustion and hybrid drivetrains, which matters because the 911 T-Hybrid’s electric motor is integrated into its DCT and rules out a conventional manual. A patent is not a product, but it is a sign of intent.

BMW is murkier. We reported in July that the M2 manual is reportedly on the chopping block despite a North American take rate above 50 percent. Our colleagues at BimmerFile put the central question well: Ferrari solved the physics, but whether the economics work at BMW Group scale is unresolved, and nobody has said anything on the record. The logic still holds, though. Clutch-by-wire actuators, load-simulating springs and the control software are things a supplier could industrialise and sell to more than one client.

The catch is price, and feel

Ferrari’s premium over the standard car is roughly 50 percent, and a Cooper JCW cannot absorb anything like that. There is also a purist objection we should take seriously. Our own ranking rewarded mechanical positivity, the slight notchiness of the R53 box and the weight of the R56 gearbox. A by-wire system can only imitate those qualities, and on paper that works. In practice it depends on how convincing the pedal and lever feel, and Ferrari had a half-million-pound budget to get that right.

Our take

Ferrari has shown that a simulated manual can win over sceptical reviewers. It has not shown that the idea scales down to cars people actually buy. For MINI, the more relevant point is that the regulatory wall now has a possible way around it. Whether anyone at BMW Group is willing to build the door remains an open question. But one thing it clear, suppliers like Getrag and others are quietly working on solutions that could one day end up in more affordable enthusiast cars. It’ll be up to MINI and BMW if that extends to the Cooper.

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