The Standard Transmission Thread

The only two vehicles I have owned have been manuals (mazda truck and subaru wrx). However, traffic is getting so bad in the Seattle area due to all the tech growth, I can pretty much guarantee the next vehicle I get will be an automatic. Unless you're driving on a weekend or after 7pm, you're just sitting there pushing the clutch in and out.

 

I actually feel the opposite. I'm a more mindless driver in an automatic and I feel that that is scarier. I am more cognizant when I am driving stick since there is so much more involved with it.

However, my stick is a two door. DaddySquirrel does NOT know how to drive stick and I do not have the patience to teach him, so we will not be switching cars anytime soon. (He has a Prius, or a GDP as he calls it....God Damned Prius. He makes fun of the damn car and people who drive it, yet he has one.) That's Since I am the main chauffeur, for ToddlerSquirrel, we shove her in the back of my Civic. It's fine since she's capable of climbing into the car seat herself now.

I will probably always drive a stick from now on. It's almost a natural thief deterrent. That and I am a control freak and I feel more in control with a standard.

 

The closest that I ever got to divorce was teaching my wife to drive a stick. A new clutch is way cheaper than a lawyer.

Find a friend that he hates already and have them do it.

 

Exactly why I am NOT going to attempt to teach him. His brother knows how. He can teach him.

 

When I was driving our '52 Chevrolet Deluxe (it was a very basic model, despite the name) I could shift so smoothly you wouldn't even know it unless you were watching me.

Yeah, I'm bragging about my three-on-the-tree prowess .

 

I learned to drive in a '59 Mercury with 3 on the tree. Graduated to driving tow trucks with a creeper gear and long-throw floor shift. You needed a formidable left leg to drive stick back in those days without hydraulic assist for the clutch. Modern manuals have such smooth and easy clutch pedal feel that even my feeble knees don't mind driving one in any conditions.

When QW and I were car shopping last spring, she insisted on a manual trans. Approaching a year with it, she loves it more every day.

All three of our kids can drive stick quite efficiently. I think everyone who is physically able should be required to learn.

 

I had a job with a moving company where I drove the really large box trucks (damned if I remember the proper name) that required a CDL. Which I didn't have, and neither did many of their drivers (if you could walk without collapsing and present a SSC, even an obvious fake, they'd hire you). A manual six speed with a split rear axle made for some interesting driving.

 

I taught my ex wife how to drive stick. For a long time we only had two stick shift cars. I still have both. I also spent an afternoon years ago teaching a woman to drive stick in a parking lot at St Albans private school in DC so I could drive her husband's new ferrari. She couldn't drive it because she didn't know how. Took the ferrari out of tenleytown and up and down river road at 50-70 miles per hour.
Back in military school in Virginia I had a friend named charlie. Charlie was a year younger than me. I taught him how to drive stick in my car even though he didn't have a license. One Friday we were going to spend the weekend at the school so we could go skiing at massenutten. He borrowed my car and took off. Turns out he drove from Virginia back to New York just so he would be kicked out of military school. His family came down on Sunday and their attorney drove my car back. I had that car for another four years still with the same clutch. I guess I taught him too well.

 

My wife's parents were pro-MT for many years. They learned to drive on MTs, and even into the '80s ATs were very uncommon in the UK unless you got into luxury cars. The good news is my wife was driving a stick when we met.

They were of the old school thought that it was easier to control a cars speed with a stick. That sort of makes sense if done properly, but not if you forced a downshift. For example (the numbers I'm using are for simplicity not accuracy) a brake job with no unpleasant surprises cost $500.00. A new clutch cost $1,500.00. A transmission repair /rebuild adds another $2,000.00. It makes sense to use your brakes, not the MT.

In a 3.5 year time span they had to have two new clutches in two different cars. My FIL swore up and down the he didn't "ride the clutch," but he did. He complained about their Subaru station wagon, but he's the one ragged out the clutch, which was made worse by the Hill Hold/No Rolling Back (or whatever it was called) feature.

When their driving skills began to diminish (at best their driving sucked, esp my FIL), we encouraged them to get ATs, explaining many times that the AT would allow them to concentrate on traffic & steering with both hands without having to work the clutch and stick. Our then BIL explained the same thing many times. They didn't listen until their son--who lived 5,000 miles away--suggested ATs.

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My wife was test driving a car with a 5 speed MT, and it kept stalling. The sales associate made the mistake of saying "women don't know how t0 drive MTs." We both very promptly informed him that she had been driving MTs for over ten years, and both of our cars were MT. It turns out the car had electrical issues that caused it to stall. The sales associate "disappeared" once we got back to the dealership.

 

You wanna see sexism in action, just take Magpie motorcycle shopping. Common sense would tell you if the female partner is sitting on bikes, perhaps you want to check your misogyny.

"Buying the little lady a bike?" "No, I'm just here to drag her ass out of the store before she goes ballistic on morons like you".

 

He obviously wasn't a good sales rep. He should've considered this--Why the hell would my wife test drive a stick if she didn't know how to drive one? Another factor is it can take anyone a few tries to get used to an unfamiliar clutch. A friend of ours majorly tore into a sales rep. The Taurus SHO he test drove had a very stiff clutch with a sudden release, and he stalled it a few times. The rep made the mistake of telling him the SHO didn't come with an AT (which, BTW, was true at the time).


You'd be surprised at some of the crap I've heard. One sales rep at Saturn ragged on Mazda vehicles, despite the fact that I had mentioned owning two of them and being very happy with them. But she was also very aggressive. During a later visit to the same dealership I mentioned to a manager that she needed some help understanding the Saturn soft-sell approach.

 

Owning a stick is a great way to keep from loaning people your car! I finally moved to an automatic about six months ago after having driven mostly sticks for about 20 years.

I thoroughly enjoy driving them through the passes, but in Portland and Seattle traffic they are a drag.

 

I was a bit quick with the above reply. I REALLY love manual transmissions. Whenever you drive a manual, you are immediately more engaged in the driving experience. It is actually quite difficult to move to auto-pilot - much more so than with an automatic. I've had experiences in an automatic (even though I did finally break down and buy one) where I've arrived somewhere and asked myself "how in the hell did I get here?" I still feel a little bad about moving to an automatic - I really do think it's a better driving experience when more people are driving sticks.

 

Ages ago four cylinder engines pretty much required MTs. The AT in our four cylinder Rav4 is nearly seamless and very responsive, and the Eco mode does help the MPG. It has a sport mode, but I've never spent much time using it.

I'm not sure a stick would be especially useful.

 

I've definitely done the phantom-clutch move.