Here's Why The Manual Z4 Is BMW's Best Car Right Now

The refreshed and retuned 2025 BMW Z4 M40i ‘Handschalter’ is a great BMW sports car amongst a dense lineup. It doesn’t need an M badge.

Photo by: Motor1.com

Chris Rosales

By: Chris Rosales

Apr 26, 2025 at 10:00am ET

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There was a great deal of fanfare when BMW announced the latest, Supra-sibling Z4 was getting a manual transmission. For the first time ever, BMW’s only true sports car launched without a manual gearbox, and no word on whether it would get one. After years of tight-lipped reticence, the Z4 got its flowers only after the Toyota Supra got its long-anticipated and popular manual gearbox. Yet this new “Handschalter” package isn’t quite a Supra carryover job.

I got the chance to sample the new manual Z4 on my roads of choice for our latest YouTube video, and I didn’t expect much from it. Being a non-M product, I thought it would surely be a bit soft, lacking in communication, and keep me wanting for a Z4 M revival. But I pretty quickly fell in love with the thing. This is BMW at its very best.

The curiosity is that BMW didn’t simply carry over Supra parts. It uses its own linkage, which is objectively inferior to the Supra’s, but is still charmingly BMW. Longish. Rubbery. Notchy. Lovely. It uses its own throttle calibration, which is distinctly blippier and more responsive than the Supra. Then BMW even retuned the dampers to better suit the experience of the manual gearbox. It’s the same old gearbox that has been in almost every manual BMW since 2005, the ZF GS6, and is the same as the Supra.

The manual Z4 is one of BMW’s best efforts in a long time, and it seemingly came from a place of passion rather than performance targets. There’s something to this car I can’t quite explain on paper, so sit back and enjoy the sights and sounds of Bavaria’s hand-shifted roadster.