BMW has hired Roberto Fedeli, Ferrari's ex technical director, for a yet unspecified role/position. Fedeli is set to join BMW officially in November, "but we currently can't say what his role will be," a BMW spokesman told Automotive News Europe. This news comes shortly on the heels of news of another notable pickup for BMW - Franciscus van Meel, former head of Audi Quattro, who will become the next chief of BMW M.

According to Automotive News:

A Ferrari spokesman said Fedeli left the sports car maker Sept. 13 and his resignation was not linked to the departure of Ferrari's long-time chairman, Luca Cordero di Montezemolo. Fedeli quit before Montezemolo stepped down as Ferrari chairman, the spokesman said.

Fedeli joined Ferrari in 1988 and has been responsible for the engineering of all Ferrari cars since 2007. His most recent model is the limited production LaFerrari gasoline-electric hybrid supercar, the fastest road car built to date by the company.

At BMW, Fedeli is expected to use his expertise with the group's M performance division or with Rolls-Royce, according to Automotive News Europe sources.

Fedeli's duties at Ferrari have been taken up by the brand’s chief technological officer Michael Leiters, who joined the company from Porsche in January. Leiters held various roles at Porsche, including program manager for the Cayenne large luxury SUV.

The decline of manual transmissions in two graphs — and proof they're coming back
By Justin Hyde 19 hours ago Motoramic

That manual transmissions in vehicles survive in now-permanent status of endangered species-dom will come as no surprise. Despite all the driving benefits and sense of control a manual brings, even most sports cars now sell more automatics than sticks when they offer their drivers the option. (And when they don't, like the Dodge Viper, they don't sell well at all.)

Today, in its annual report on U.S. vehicle fuel efficiency, the Environmental Protection Agency provided a clear snapshot of just how endangered manuals are in two vivid graphs — along with a surprising sliver of hope for those who prefer three pedals to two.

The EPA keeps track of transmissions, engines and other vehicle technologies as part of its mandate to measure vehicle fuel economy — it's up to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to enforce the rules that call for a steady rise of efficiency toward 2025. In 2013, new cars and trucks together averaged 24.1 mpg — a 0.5 mpg increase from 2013, a bit slow considering how far the industry has to climb. That imaginary average vehicle weighed a hair over two tons and had a 227-hp engine; Mazda was the most fuel-efficient full-line brand, while Chrysler-Fiat was the least (thanks to Ram and Jeep.)
These charts from the EPA's report show the production shares of transmissions going back to 1980. The numbers are the gears; the letters "L" and "A" are for automatics, with "L" standing for those with a lockup torque converter, the standard in most vehicles. The green section for "M" shows how modern five-speed manuals peaked around 1987 for cars at 25 percent and in 1990 for trucks at roughly 30 percent, before the great decline set in. (Four- and three-speed manuals had been on the way out long before.)

While car buyers have shunned stick shifts, there's at least a core of holdouts who want to choose their own gear the old-fashioned way; it's still unthinkable to imagine a Ford Mustang or Chevy Camaro without at least a manual option. But in trucks, manuals are all but extinct; all half-ton models (F-150, Chevy Silverado, Ram) are automatics only. That bump marked "L8" in the top corner of the car and truck charts represents Chrysler's bet on 8-speeds as its major fuel-economy move, even in its lowest-cost models.

The hope I mentioned? You can see that the line for manuals in cars has stopped shrinking — and sure enough, buried deep within the spreadsheets of the EPA's report, lies the data that shows manual transmission cars hit bottom and have started to come back — from 311,618 in the 2011 model year to 452,232 models built in the 2013 model year. The EPA's forecast says manuals should grow again among 2014 models to 6 percent of production. It's still a small share of the market, but it shows there's a growing audience of drivers who doesn't mind having more control over their machines.