Last week, we published a post where we reported that two thirds of the Toyota 86s sold in US were automatics. However, Mazda begs to differ with some stats of their own and give the manual transmission supporters some hope.

U.S. publication Autoblog spoke to Mazda PR program manager Tim Olson and was told that a staggering 76% of the MX-5 buyers in America selected the manual transmission option, leaving the rest with the six-speed automatic. Being the purer car, the sales data was based on the soft-top version of the car from July 2018.

As for the MX-5 RF, 52% of the sales in the past 12 months were made up of stick shift cars while the remaining 48% sold have the automatic gearbox.

While the above numbers do proof that driving enthusiasts are still voting with their money for manual gearboxes, it is weird to find Toyota reporting that only 33% of its 86 buyers opt for the self-shifting option.