The last manual Volkswagen GTI has been built and sold, a company spokesperson confirmed to Motor1 on Tuesday. The lucky buyer, Jamie Orr, documented his buying experience on TikTok, giving us an up-close look at the car.
Instead of doing a big tribute to say goodbye to the very last manual-equipped GTI, Volkswagen decided to let the stick shift die quietly. The car in question, a black GTI 380, was allocated to a dealership in Missoula, Montana. It wasn’t a special-order deal, either. It just showed up on the truck to be added to the dealer’s inventory.
Orr, being a VW enthusiast, tracked the car down and drove 2,300 miles from his hometown in Pennsylvania to pick it up. Instead of driving it back home, he used a Volkswagen Atlas painted in a custom Harlequin livery, reminiscent of the multi-colored, special-edition Polo sold in 1995. We’re not sure we’ve seen anyone more into Volkswagens. Something tells us the very last manual GTI is going to a good home.
The GTI 380 seen here is the very last of a special edition launched in 2023 to wave goodbye to the manual transmission. It gets black seats, black mirror caps, and a black roof, along with plaid-pattern seat inserts—a design staple of the German hot hatch. Output from the EA888 turbocharged four-cylinder is unchanged, at 241 horsepower and 273 pound-feet of torque.
From now on, you’ll only be able to buy a GTI with a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission. The same is true of the more powerful Golf R, which also lost its third pedal for the 2025 model year. Sorry, purists.
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