Subaru’s manual transmission 2027 lineup is now official — and it’s the most contrarian product announcement in the industry this year. While manuals hover around 1% of overall new-car sales and most automakers quietly delete the option with every redesign, Subaru stood up at the 2026 Fuji 24 Hours endurance race, showed three cars under sheets, and committed to putting all three on sale with clutch pedals by 2027. Here’s everything known so far, what the hardware choices reveal, and the honest odds of any of them reaching North America.
The Subaru Manual Transmission 2027 Lineup: Three Cars
1. A Manual WRX With STI Bones
The headliner: a manual WRX sedan becoming a permanent fixture in Subaru‘s Japanese lineup starting in 2027 — and the transmission choice is the tell. Instead of the TY75 six-speed in the current WRX, the new car gets the heavier-duty TY85 gearbox from the previous-generation WRX STI, paired with the turbocharged 2.4-liter boxer, reportedly without electrification. You don’t engineer an STI-spec gearbox into a car for image reasons — that’s hardware for sustained hard use, and it’s why outlets covering the announcement immediately called this the closest thing yet to a next-generation WRX STI. Subaru hasn’t said the three letters. The parts list is saying them anyway.
2. A Lighter BRZ
The second car is a BRZ “Complete Car” — Japanese-market speak for a factory-built special — developed from the STI Sport Type RA edition of late 2025. The focus is shedding weight rather than adding power, which is the correct answer for a chassis whose entire appeal is balance. Given that roughly 90% of BRZ buyers already choose the manual, this one’s transmission was never in question.
3. An Affordable Manual Hatchback
The wildcard: an all-new five-door hatchback aimed at affordability first, with room for performance variants later. This is arguably the most important of the three — cheap, practical manual cars are the entry point that teaches the next generation to drive stick, and that on-ramp has nearly vanished from every market. A budget manual Subaru hatch with a performance version on the roadmap is a genuine gap-filler.
Why Subaru Is Doing This
The announcement wasn’t a one-off press release — it came with structure behind it. Subaru created a dedicated Sports Vehicle Planning Office to oversee enthusiast products, pulling engineering directly from its Super Taikyu endurance racing program (the Fuji 24 Hours venue wasn’t an accident). And the business case is hiding in plain sight in the take-rate data: while manuals are 1% of the overall market, 85% of WRX buyers and 90% of BRZ buyers choose the stick. For Subaru’s enthusiast models, the manual isn’t a legacy checkbox — it’s the volume configuration. We covered the broader pattern in our manual transmission market analysis: the stick shift survived by concentrating into exactly the cars Subaru builds.
The Catch: Japan First, Everyone Else TBD
All three cars are confirmed for the Japanese market only so far. Subaru has said nothing about North America — which is genuinely strange, because the US is where Subaru’s manual take rates are strongest and where the WRX’s rally-sedan identity was built. The current US-market 2026 WRX starts at $32,495 and still offers a manual, so the channel exists.
Reading the tea leaves, the case for US availability is strong for the WRX (the TY85 car would slot naturally above the current WRX as the de facto STI return, and Subaru of America has spent years fielding “where’s the STI?” questions), moderate for the BRZ special (limited-run complete cars have historically stayed home, though the Type RA name has crossed the Pacific before), and unknown for the hatchback (a new nameplate’s business case gets decided by exchange rates and factory allocation, not enthusiasm). Nothing is promised — but announcing three manuals while your loudest manual market watches from the sidelines would be a strange way to end the story.
The Bottom Line
Three new manual cars, a dedicated enthusiast engineering office, and an STI-grade gearbox in a non-hybrid turbo sedan: the Subaru manual transmission 2027 roadmap isn’t preserving the stick shift, it’s investing in it — the strongest forward commitment any automaker has made to the stick shift this decade. The open question is geography. If you’re in North America and any of these three matter to you, the next year of announcements — likely timed to auto show season — is the one to watch. Carscoops and the enthusiast press are tracking every development.