A high-ranking executive at Volkswagen says the Wolfsburg-based brand will “continue to offer” manual gearboxes for the foreseeable future.

Matthias Rabe, VW’s chief technology officer, told Autocar there were no immediate plans to kill off the manual cog-swapper despite the broader global market's sustained shift towards automatic gearboxes.

“Some people enjoy going back to their roots and changing gear manually, and so long as there is a demand, we will continue to offer them,” Rabe told the publication.

Of course, a six-speed manual gearbox for the new Golf 8 GTI was confirmed at the hot hatch's reveal in February 2020, although only the seven-speed dual-clutch transmission is expected to be offered at launch in South Africa. It's a similar case for the rest of the upcoming local Golf 8 range, which is set to comprise only DSG variants at launch.

Original article from Car