The fact that my mom’s car was a stick-shift was what killed my attempts to learn to drive back when I was a teenager. It was just one thing over my limit of what I was able to pay attention to at once.
Even in an automatic, I’m not a great driver (mostly due to lack of practice), but I can do it.
Learned when I was sixteen but haven’t had access to anything with a manual transmission for nearly 20 years.
I learned to drive when I was 10. I helped out on the family ranch. My first rig that day was the 1944 Willys MB. Basically a CJ-2, it had/has a three speed on the floor & a 2 speed transfer case.
The next was a 1952 Dodge Power Wagon, a 2.5 ton truck with a 5 speed manual transmission, 2 speed transfer case, & a 2 speed rear axle. One needs to remember not to use the high rear axle range in 6 wheel drive. You can break things that way.
While I do not remember learning on the Peterbuilt Semi tractor until the next season, the rest of my family tells me that I drove it that first day. It was made in 1948 it had a 150 horsepower Cummins engine with a 5 speed main box, a 4 speed Brownie, (or auxiliary), transmission, & 2 speed rear axles. It had 40 gears forward & 8 in reverse. None of the gear boxes had syncros. They were/are all straight tooth gears. One has to double clutch to drive this rig.
I got my farm permit at 14, whitch allowed me to legally drive on public roads. I mostly drove the Dodge or the Pete.
No one liked driving the Power Wagon as it had/has Armstrong power steering. I am a fair sized fellow & my arms are bigger than most folks legs. Thus, my bigger cousins & I got to drive the Dodge.
I got to drive the Pete as I was one of 3 out of 13 drivers that drove it well. I rarely ground any of the gears & I was very good at moving both the shift levers at the same time while steering & operating the rear axle gear selector. If you added anything else, I was done.
In the off season, I drove the Willys. It is amazing how much “Farm business” a 14 year old kid can find for one of these 1/4 ton farm trucks. Most of this business was down at the beach! We also had a bunch of VWs that I wrenched on & drove.
I voted that I can drive a car with a manual transmission. I believe that I am a fair hand at it.
OH, & for the record, my girl cousin, who is 2 weeks younger than I, learned to drive these rigs on the same day, at the same time. We traded off who went first. On this note, all of my sisters learned on manual transmissions, all 8 of them.
I know, but I suspect it primarily isn’t gender as much as age that correlates with all the stick drivers in the poll. The machismo might correlate a little better with those who sneer disdainfully at driving automatics :D.
Because if you can drive a stick, you can drive any [car or smaller pickup] if all you can drive is automatic, then all you can drive is automatic.
I am comfortable with 4 on the floor, 3 on the tree and the funky dash one from the Citroen 2CV. I can drive up to a 35 foot truck and several varieties of fork lift/fork truck thanks to working industrially.
Another Valiant owner checking in: 73, baby blue. I loved that car.
Duh pardon me; first Valiant was a 63. I’m older than I would like to admit.
I have done it and even had a couple of vehicles with it but I hate/hated it. Too much work and not at all necessary.
Sure, I get that. I mean, I do rev match when I’m maintaining speed and want to shift to a lower gear to overtake (like from 6-3). If I didn’t, then you would get a fairly annoying lurch. Most normal down-shifting where I’m also slowing the vehicle down, I don’t find it necessary, as I’m popping it into a gear appropriate for the RPMs, so it’s a smooth shift anyway.
And, yes, drivers who use constant engine braking to slow them down (or always went through the gears sequentially) would annoy me, but I can’t remember the last time I’ve been in a car with someone else driving stick to observe this.
Grew up on a farm so lots of familiarity with manuals. Tractors, trucks, motorcycles. My first car was an automatic but since 1984 it’s been nothing but manuals for me. Sports cars, more motorcycles and currently an SUV. I prefer manual. It keeps me actively engaged with the act of driving.
I first learned to drive on automatics in 1975. I was taught to drive a manual by the woman I was on a road trip with; she took ill and made me drive. I had to learn fast. That was in 1981.
Later on I had my own manual car from 1988 to about 1993. It was a hand-me-down from my sister, speaking of gender. I discovered that, as easy as it became for me to handle the gearshift efficiently under optimum conditions, one thing you never want to attempt is driving it while eating an ice cream cone.
Since I gave up that one, in the quarter-century since, I’ve never even given the matter any thought; I didn’t notice when manual cars began dying out and only found out just now from Tamerlane.
Yet another checking with with the column-shift Valiant. It was my parents’ car, a 1966 model, I think. I learned in the mall parking lot with my stepmom.
Most of my cars have been sticks, including my current Honda Element.
Another Valiant driver checking in. It was my best friend’s mom’s car, and we learned to drive it up and down the dirt roads of the ‘neighborhood.’
I actually learned to drive on a farm tractor, and took my test in some tiny toyota (celica?) which hated me and i sucked at and stalled out soooo many times.
After that I avoided them until my last car got volunteered as the crumple zone of a Dodge Ram, and the sporty little Fiat I found was nearly $3000 cheaper as a manual.
Y’all talking about picking up basic competency in like an hour are making me feel bad. It was a solid six months of driving it hours every day to work and back before I felt generally confident and competent. I was still stalling out on unexpectedly slanted stopsigns for pretty much the first whole year.
I learned to drive in an old Chevy truck with manual transmission.
It’s been 30 years. I’d have to ease into driving a manual again.
I still remember the basics.
I didn’t mind driving a manual in rural areas. It wouldn’t be pleasant in a big city.
I learned on an automatic (my mo had a stick, but she was a disaster as a driver’s ed teacher; too nervous). But I didn’t own a car until I was almost 26, when I bought a used Tercel with a manual from a graduating Turkish Ph.D. student. I had first driven stick many years before, when I was given no choice in the matter by an Italian friend in my dorm, who got us a Driveaway car (remember those?) over Christmas break my freshman year to get us from NYC to Chicago. To his credit, he was a much better teacher than Mom was.
But I didn’t drive stick again until almost 8 years later. I had to get rid of the Tercel when I broke my leg and had a lot of surgery and rehab. Driving stick with one functional leg? Yeah, not a good idea. I ended up spending most of a 3-year period on crutches. I don’ t drive much where I live now (I’m a public transit commuter - Tom Scud and I own one car between the two of us, and it’s 6 years old and has about 21K miles on it), and haven’t owned a stick since then, but I bet I’d figure it out again if I had to. But my opportunities generally involve rental cars in countries where they drive on he opposite side of the road, and I don’t want to spend my vacation trying to figure that out with the opposite hand in an unfamiliar place.
That’s true but, in my case, it hasn’t come up in 30+ years of driving. I have never been in a situation where my only car option was a manual. In fact, I can’t remember a situation where I was borrowing/renting a car and said “Oh, I’ll take Car A because Car B is manual and I can’t drive it”. I assume that the older I get, the rarer manual transmissions will be and the chances of me ever getting screwed because I can’t drive a manual will grow ever slimmer.
In my particular experience, it’s sort of like saying “If you can ride a unicycle, you can ride both a bike and a unicycle but bike riders can only ride a bike”. While technically accurate, it implies more of a handicap than it actually is.
Yep
I learned to use a manual on my first vehicle a motorcycle.
I can shift a car clutchless
I can heal/toe, but with my big feet it’s more like toe/toe in some cars
I can drive synchromesh and non synchromesh
And I’m one hell of a forklift jocky:smack:
Basically anything between 3-18 gears
Off topic/on topic how hard is it to switch from left drive to right drive in a manual?
I remember asking Dad when I was a kid if the gears and pedals were backward too.(US Navy,USS Leyte 1950’s)
He didn’t know either answer, he never drove a civilian vehicle while on liberty.
I have been told/seen on TV pedals and shifter are the same.
Drivers ed cars and the car I took my driver test in were automatics. But my dad’s Pinto was a stick. And, oh, it was a cool Pinto. Silver, red and black swoosh stripes, rubber spoiler under the front bumper, fish bowl window on the back panel, red shag carpet. Choice!
I believe the lesson went something like this:
“Dad can I take the Pontiac?”
“No, but you can take the Pinto if you can show me you can drive it.”
Thirty minutes later I was on my way to the arcade. In my black and white checked shoes, head band and fluorescent blue shirt.
The pedal arrangement is the same. I’ve driven a handful of RHD cars with manuals, and didn’t have much trouble. In fact, the hardest thing was remembering where to look for the rear view mirror.