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Maintaining Standards
On the flagship podcast this week, James Lileks talked about how young people who yearn for driverless cars will miss out on the freedom of driving oneself, and made a brief aside about the disappearance of manual transmissions. Growing up in the early ’70s, most of us learned to drive in big sedans with automatics, but after the oil embargo suddenly there were scads of Japanese cars with precise little manual transmissions.
It helped that the early Japanese imports had horrendously bad automatic transmissions and not much torque. So we became converts. We still own several cars with manual transmissions, although they are harder to find than ever. As long ago as 2001, we had to go 300 miles to find and purchase a CR-V with a manual.
Our cars range from my 1999 F250 (manuals no longer offered), which has a giant shifter rod and a cue-ball shift knob (special order); to the ’73 VW Thing, with its ubiquitous air-cooled VW transmission; to my 2017 GT350, which has an incredible modern six-speed Tremec that is the smoothest thing ever. I’m often tempted to buy an aftermarket knob but the factory one is pretty good.
We have one automatic transmission (Ford Escape) which is much preferred for long trips and slogging through stop and go traffic. I know that modern autos are very good, and that paddle shifters are in fact faster on the track than old-school manuals, but the joy of rowing through the gears will be missed.
When I was a new firefighter, we had an old GMC pumper with a three-speed high/low transmission; becoming proficient at shifting that truck was a joy. All of our fire trucks have automatics now, and we don’t replace clutches like we used to.
So feel bad for those young people who will never, ever get to enjoy three on the tree.
Published in General
Underneath the rarity of stick shifts, I think is a shift from driving as an adventure. I bought my first car (father had to co-sign because of my age) with Christmas tips from my paper route. It was a stick (of course) 50 something Fiat 600. I got it about 4 months before my 16th birthday and would practice driving up and down our drive which was on a pretty steep hill. I even learned to parallel park there. Once I could drive, I went everywhere. The car was freedom.
Our oldest son learned to drive in our 90 something Suzuki Samurai. Like @tex929rr, we found that putting the transmission into low had enough torque so it could survive the initial learner’s mistakes. Large fields were great.
I don’t think our son had the same interest in driving, though.
Now, his son – who just turned 17 – has no interest at all and I don’t think he even has a license.
As for me, we have an automatic LR4 which is great for hauling things and going in high snow, but my car is a 2003 BMW Z4 with a 5 speed stick. I’m keeping that car until one of us dies.
I learned to drive in a ford truck with a 351W and three on the tree! (For those of you under 40, that means a three speed manual transmission with the gear shift on the steering column. )
I just love your car, @tex929rr. I learned how to drive a manual on my dad’s 1972 Ford pickup. Drove it to the tobacco fields in the summer. Then it was a ‘77 Corolla. My first vehicle of my own was a 1989 Toyota pickup with a stick and 4wheel drive. Wish I still had it. Took me to work in 20 inches of snow without any problem.
This reminds me of one summer on my grandfather’s farm. He had several large Peach orchards and it was time to spray them. The setup was an old tractor towing a tanker/sprayer with seats and spray wands on each side. For some reason, I was chosen to drive the tractor.
We set off and I didn’t really have any problems with the gears, but because of the turning radius of the tractor and sprayer, it couldn’t turn at the end of one row and come down the other. The result was a confusing – to me – overlapping set of loops. We would get to the end of one row and I would need to put in the clutch while I figured out the next row to go down. When I would try to start up, I would bend my leg – which had been holding the clutch down with all my weight – and the clutch would pop up, the tractor lurch forward and the two guys on the sprayer seats would fall off.
That didn’t last more than a couple of times when I found my self in the sprayer seat.
Seriously. I would slowly let up on the clutch and get a severe case of shake leg. And on more than one occasion the clutch would slip from under My foot and Dumpster would leap forward almost doing a wheelie.
Spent a lot of time driving a small dump truck in the summer between college semesters. The gearing was so odd I usually started in 2nd gear. 1st was for the hills at the landfill. Just one of those things you got used to.
Same place had an old van with a manual shifter on the steering column. Another great manual experience. Sort of. It might top the list of “Jalopies I Have Driven.”
Keep the stories coming! This is great.
On the same farm where I drove the tractor, my grandfather had a ’48 Dodge (IIRC) that my grandmother drove. She would get it into third gear and never change. Until I learned to drive it, I thought it was an automatic with very poor acceleration.
Another good use for a manual transmission: When I first started dating, I had a ’59 TR3. When I was driving, she would sometimes think I was driving too fast. All I had to do was to shift to a higher gear and lug the engine a bit. She was interpreting the sound of the engine as an indicator of speed. Once I taught her to drive (a real adventure), that didn’t work any more.
One last (?) thing. When I was learning to drive the Fiat, my mother would drive it and me to the local high school. There was just one problem – she didn’t know how to use a stick shift! So when it was time to shift, I would tell her to put the clutch in and then I would shift and tell her to let her foot up slowly. It was an exciting drive.
I’m still trying to figure how to change the clock for EST in my truck.
I learned on an old Ford pickup while working as an illegal alien construction worker in central Alberta in 1976. Spent the bicentennial summer in the great white north.
One argument in favor of keeping manual transmissions around, especially for the young’uns (at least until full self-driving cars appear) is that a driver cannot simultaneously drive a manual transmission and read or send text messages on a phone. Especially if the car is very old and does not have power steering. I have enjoyed some videos of people teaching teenagers how to drive a very old grain hauling truck on the farm, or a Ford Model A.
When I was learning how to drive, the two vehicles we had were a 74 Suburban with 3 on the tree and a 72 Pinto with a 4 speed stick. I’ve mostly owned cars with manuals ever since, as I like the control it gives you, especially in the snow. My latest find was a used 2014 Mazda CX-5 with a 6 speed stick. It was marked down, because they were having a hard time finding someone to buy it. Thankfully, my wife likes manuals as well.
Driving a manual you get to know what the engine sounds like at given speeds in given gears, which I found very useful in keeping to the speed limit on some streets.
When I had the Mini Coopers the street just outside our subdivision had a 35 mph speed limit that was ridiculously low for the street, and was rigorously enforced by the town police. But with a particular engine sound in 3rd gear (of 6) I knew I was within the limit without even having to look at the speedometer.
[The lack of engine sound when I switched to an electric car meant I had to learn again to keep an eye on the speedometer.]
Well, when I was in college we fit nine people in a Beetle to go drinking in Idaho (from Washington State).
The infamous Cougar – Vandal closing-time run?
I learned to drive in my dad’s 60-something VW Beetle with a manual transmission. My first car was a Toyota Corona, also with a manual shift. In the intervening years, my wife and I have owned vehicles with a mixture of automatic and manual transmissions. We bought a new Toyota Celica (two door) manual just before our twins were born in the late-80’s. After that, it was mini-vans with automatic transmissions. Recently, we had the opportunity to buy a 2001 Audi TT convertible – with a six-speed manual transmission. The dealer encouraged us to take a test drive and we were both a bit apprehensive. Would we be able to drive this car after so many years (>20) of driving automatics? For both of us, muscle memory worked just fine and that car is like a fountain of youth! It is so fun to drive a manual again! Sadly, we have put the convertible away for the long Michigan winter, but look forward to summer 2021!
We got a Nissan Pathfinder back in the ’90s when I was learning how to drive. My brothers, purposely, made sure I never learned to drive a stick! And I still don’t. I have no problems with it because I never had to worry about a clutch.
My first husband taught me to drive a stick shift, when I was about to buy my first brand new car. He taught me in his 1960 Fiat 600, and he was an excellent teacher. That car was very easy to learn, and you could shift with just wrist motion. It took me about two hours to learn well enough to go anywhere. I bought a brand new 1976 Honda Civic hatchback. After that, my next car was a 1975 Alfa Romeo Alfetta GT, which we drove on our Western National Parks vacation, and we put about 3700 miles on it.
The Fiat 600 was a fun car. Hubby completely restored it, from bodywork to upholstery, painted it the same bright yellow as my Civic.
Oh, and I forgot. My second-favorite manual transmission car was a Subaru Legacy station wagon. That thing would go anywhere in the snow, over humps that were higher off the ground than it was. Nothing stopped me, even in a big Seattle snowstorm when the streets were littered with abandoned vehicles.
I’ve related this one here before, but it fits nicely. We went into DC for a concert some years ago, and decided to stay overnight at a hotel rather than drive the 2 hours home late at night. The car went into valet parking and the next morning we went to the valet stand with our claim check. After about a half hour, the 20-something valet pulled up in a hotel van and told us he’d have to take us to the parking garage because he couldn’t drive a stick.
I got my license on my birthday in 1977 and never drove a manual until the summer of 1981. I was going to be a counselor at a Young Life camp, the only “adult” (at 20 years old, what were they thinking) driving a dozen high schoolers from San Diego to Woodleaf Camp, north of Sacramento (a thirteen-hour drive.)
I knew I was driving a van, but it wasn’t until the night before a 5 AM departure (at the same time as Prince Charles and Lady Diana’s wedding) that I was told the van had a manual transmission. A friend spent an hour in a parking lot that night trying to teach me to drive.
I stalled out a couple of times stopping for fast food and such, but most of the drive was freeways and not a problem. Until I got to the steep hills leading to the camp. I gave up and let one of the students (kid going into his senior year) drive that last bit of the trip.
I wasn’t so bad driving on the way home. And I eventually worked as a night auditor at a hotel where I had to double as a valet, so the skill served me well.
The old stick shifts I used (early 80s) were so ergonomically configured I could change gears by just using the accelerator and the stick. Never even needed the clutch most of the time.
And yes, I still monitor the speed of the car by listening to the engine sound.
Most enjoyable car I ever had, the Mitsubishi Eclipse:
(Google pic, but that was the model and color.) Man, was this thing frisky. I named it the Defiant, after a Star Trek wessel, because I am a dork. Used to get off work at the radio station at 12:30 AM and have the highway all to myself, revved up with post-show adrenaline.
My current car has a manual-shift feature, but it’s not the same. No clutch, and a paddle instead of a stick. But I still enjoy having some control.
The first car I bought with my money was a 1975 Saab 99 LE. So much fun to drive with a 4 speed manual. Helped, too, when the starter failed and I could roll start it down the hill.
Not that I remember. In 1970, you could drink beer at 19 in Idaho. Washington has always had a 21 drinking age.
A friend of mine who went to the University of Idaho used to talk about the closing time of bars being different between Moscow and Pullman. I forget which direction the run for the last call was.
Visit Germany and rent a car. Manual is standard here. We had to look for an automatic when we bought our car. Vrouwe won’t drive manual.
Through this discussion I had been thinking I hadn’t driven a 3 on the tree, but you reminded me that I drove our church’s 1972 Dodge Maxiwagons that were 3 on the tree manuals on trips totaling thousands of miles. Including the trip on which I met Mrs. Tabby in 1979. I had to take a DMV driving test in one of tbem, too.