Pickup trucks with manual gearboxes used to be the norm. There’s a good reason for that. Trucks were also primarily used as work vehicles. Whether you’re pulling a stump on a job site or towing a trailer full of stone—or your boat on the weekend—manual gearboxes had a genuine role to play. Especially when older automatics were notoriously less robust.
But that was then. Ford recently told us that one of the reasons they cannot sell the Maverick hybrid with a standard automatic, but only with a CVT, is durability and fuel economy. The CVT is more efficient, but it can’t handle as much torque. Meaning: The automatic reigns supreme for strength.
Meanwhile, a truck that competes with Ford’s other mid-size truck, the Ranger, is the Toyota Tacoma.
And unlike that Ford, it’s the very last pickup sold in the U.S. to offer a manual gearbox. For now. We say that because through the first two quarters of 2025, Toyota has sold over 300,000 conventional (non-hybrid) Tacomas. It’s by far the best-selling mid-sized pickup in America.
In that same six-month window, Toyota sold just 5,427 GR86 sports cars. Yet, Toyota has still sold more manual gearbox GR86s than Tacomas in 2025. How much longer might the last stick-shift pickup in America remain? We have some ideas.
- Base Trim Engine
-
I-FORCE 2.4L ICE
- Base Trim Transmission
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8-speed automatic
- Base Trim Drivetrain
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Four-Wheel Drive
- Base Trim Horsepower
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228 HP @6000 RPM
- Base Trim Torque
-
243 lb.-ft. @ 1600 RPM
The Hot Tacoma
The pace of 2025 Tacoma sales has soared, a scorching 88 percent increase over last year’s numbers. There are two reasons why. The Tacoma’s latest, fourth-generation Tacoma debuted last year, but you couldn’t get every grade of the new truck until this year. As sales were winding down in 2024, customers sat on their wallets, awaiting the new-new.
However, you can’t get the strongest engines mated to Toyota’s six-speed manual, so wanting to self-shift also saddles those customers with less power. That’s the case even when, technically, the same 2.4-liter engine sits under the hood of both trucks with eight-speed automatics and six-speed manuals. And Toyota no longer offers its least-expensive SR model with a manual, either.
So, at this point, you can only order a manual with the TRD Sport and TRD Off-Road, and you can only have these in AWD versions if you want a manual. FYI, due to gear constraints, the 270-horsepower 2.4-liter version with the manual gearbox truck is down from 278 horsepower and 317 pound-feet of torque in the automatic version of the same truck.
And you cannot have the 326-horsepower hybrid with a stick, so manual gearboxes in Tacoma land mean giving up some of the reasons you might want one, like more pulling power.
| Tacoma TRD Sport | Tacoma TRD Off-Road | Tacoma TRD Sport i-Force Max | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Engine | Turbocharged 2.4-liter 4-cylinder | Turbocharged 2.4-liter 4-cylinder | Turbocharged 2.4-liter 4-cylinder hybrid |
| Transmission | Six-speed manual | Six-speed manual | Eight-speed automatic |
| Horsepower | 270 hp | 270 hp | 326 hp |
| Torque | 310 lb-ft | 310 lb-ft | 465 lb-ft |
| Max Towing | 6,500 pounds | 6,500 pounds | 6,000 pounds |
| Max Payload | 1,705 pounds | 1,705 pounds | 1,710 pounds |
| Starting MSRP | $43,795 | $43,795 | $46,720 |
Two Silver Linings
Still want that manual? Okay, Toyota does charge you $800 less than if you opted for the automatic in the TRD Sport and $1,100 less than if you got the eight-speed auto TRD Off-Road.
And to ease gear changes, Toyota borrows from its sports-car bin and includes rev-matched downshift technology. They also add a clutch-start canceler that enables you to start off-road on a steep incline without having to depress the clutch.
What’s Missing?
Besides the fact that you cannot get the manual and Toyota’s most powerful and most fuel-efficient engine, you do get a pickup with Toyota’s Multi-Terrain system (essentially reprogramming stability and traction control), though the off-road crawl function that works like a slow cruise control for off-roading doesn’t function on the manual-gearbox Taco.
Why Might Toyota Finally Kill Its Tacoma Manual?
Toyota is the last American truck brand to sell a three-pedal pickup. The only prior holdout was Jeep, but they axed that option on the Gladiator at the end of last year. There’s no full-sized pickup with a stick, and there hasn’t been any since Ram killed that choice in 2018, and rivals like the Nissan Frontier eliminated theirs way back in 2019 due to low demand. Based on the percentages shared with TopSpeed from Toyota, we’re guessing they sold no more than 1,440 Tacomas with manuals through July 1 of this year.
And we’re guesstimating that they sold just about double that number of GR86s with manuals.
Toyota doesn’t break out GR Corolla from total Corolla sales, but Reuters reports that there’s enough demand for at least 10,000 GR Corollas in the U.S. each year, and Toyota shared that a whopping 72 percent of GR Corolla customers want the stick.
All that’s great; it means there’s a strong incentive for manuals to survive in Toyota sports cars.
But the cost to Toyota making gearboxes for their pickups cannot pencil out. That’s a tiny take rate, and even if Taco fans gripe, they’re clearly not actually ordering the hands-down most popular mid-sized truck in America with a manual gearbox. If customers don’t want it, Toyota won’t make it.
TopSpeed’s Take
We asked Toyota where manuals still sell, and the answer surprised us: the Northeast U.S. and the Mountain West. The latter makes sense, but the former? You’d guess California, but that’s not what the numbers say. What that says to us is that if you want a manual Tacoma, first, act fast. Who knows how long Toyota will keep selling them? And second, when the only option becomes a used Taco, expand your search nationally, and target Colorado. And perhaps, shockingly, New York State, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.