The poll results are very surprising. I guess because this board skews older? 279 - yes, 29 No is reversed from what I’d expect.
Manual transmissions in cars went out of popularity in the early to mid fifties. Trucks, maybe mid 60’s?
Do dealerships even stock cars with manual transmissions anymore? I know the feature can be special ordered on most vehicles. You can special order a cigarette lighter and ashtray in the door panels too. LOL
^ Don’t discount the power of self-selection. Folks who are not stick drivers are probably also less likely to open a thread about stick driving.
This is just not true. Out of all the cars listed on eBay from the entire decade of the 1960s, 1,748 are automatic, 1,537 are manual. That’s almost 50-50. (Granted, an additional 590 are “not specified.”) Out of all the cars from the 70s, 1,655 are automatic, 1,050 are manual. Not as close, but still fairly even. For the 1980s - 1,032 are automatic, 658 are manual. That’s more of a decline. For the 90s, 1,510 are automatic, 832 are manual. Again, more of a decline.
Now, this is eBay, so we’re going to be primarily talking about cars with some kind of enduring legacy from earlier decades. Many of the manual cars from the 60s and 70s are muscle cars, not sedans or wagons. But still, muscle cars were very popular. It may be that Joe Average didn’t care to fuss with a stick shift, but car guys certainly did, and that’s a pretty big demographic.
Maybe we’re just using different definitions of “out of popularity.”
As has been pointed out, repeatedly, in comments upthread (including by both you and me, I think), but which maybe someone didn’t take the time to read. 
yes, no power steering either of course! such a cute car a 1960’s maybe 50
s era two door white grandma car, in 1979 it was a relic, but with mag wheels and a surf rack so adorbs! lol
Not I. That would be bizarre.
Yes, I can drive a stick shift.
I’m 67 and learned to drive in the late 1960’s when manual transmission cars were still very common.
Speaking just for myself, I found it complicated and never got the hang of it, even though different friends tried to teach me.
Implicitly in your post, you’re acknowledging that it’s more complicated than an automatic. I never had to take a day or two to figure out how to drive an automatic. Get in car, put car in “reverse”, back off the driveway onto the street, put car in “Drive” and Bob’s your uncle. No learning time needed. A stick is a more complicated type of driving, as all the posts about how it can be more difficult during busy traffic illustrates.
Like Colibri, the argument that a stick is “fun” is a null program for me. I get in a car to get from A to B.
So, I still haven’t heard any explanation why knowing how to drive with a stick is a valuable skill.
I’ve been wondering what’s going to happen to classic cars once/if we all go electric. Will they become the most expensive paperweights in the world?
As I mentioned upthread in other words, its utility depends on how often you come in contact or are likely to come in contact with manual transmissions. I swore to myself to learn after spending much time in Europe first in 1996, where everybody I knew had manual gearboxes. Eventually, when I moved to Europe in 1998, I learned and it was very useful to me, as now I could drive anybody’s car when I needed to. For one, the company car which I used regularly for assignments was a stick shift BMW. For two, all my friends all still only had sticks. Even in the US years before it would have been handy, as one of my roommates had a stick, and nobody in the house could drive her car, as she was the only stick driver, and this was a bit annoying, as for any long trips, she’d have to drive the whole way. And there have even now been a few times where it’s been a useful skill, as I needed to drive a stick either for work or just to borrow a friend’s car to go to the store when I was visiting him and needed to borrow his car for a bit.
But if you never find yourself in these situations and never see finding yourself in a situation where you have to drive a manual, then of course the value of the skill is more a party trick than an invaluable skill.
It certainly is from an economic standpoint.
Up until rather recently, it was easier to find a cheaper used car that was a manual. My last car was actually a station wagon with a 5-speed. It sat on the lot for a bit, as there was no one who wanted it, that is, until I saw it and fell in love.
I got it for a bit over 1/2 the price that the same car would have gone for as an auto. My negotiation tactic?: “Is there anyone else in the entire city that actually wants this car?”
If you can find them, they are still cheaper, but they are harder to find as fewer are made these days.
Never had to replace the clutch on it (though I did have to replace the master cylinder), but if I did, then clutches are much cheaper than automatic transmissions.
If you are nice to your clutch, it can last a long, long time. It seems that auto transmissions just need to be replaced/refurbished from time to time, no matter how you drive it.
In your case, it also seems like the car sat. But, on the flip side, there a good number of people like me who specifically look for manuals, so the supply-demand curve, at least here, might not be as lopsided as one thinks. Buying manuals, for me, was not cheaper except for really junk cars that nobody wants. The first manual I bought was back in 2004, when I bought a 1991 Nissan Stanza for $500 from a car lot. Now that was a car somebody specifically looking for a stick isn’t going to give a shit about. The other cars I paid for the same I would have paid for in automatic models, I think. At least my car dealer friend said it didn’t matter, as people who are looking for manuals specifically want manuals, and since there’s fewer desirable recent vintage versions of them out there, there’s actually less price competition.
Never had the opportunity to learn how to drive a stick shift—never had access to one—and I’ve never missed it.
Party trick. That’s about it. I’ve never in my life heard someone say “we need someone who can drive stick, stat!”
My parents’ cars were always automatic, I’ve always had an automatic, and I’ve never been in the position where the lack of ability to drive stick has caused any inconvenience whatsoever.
I’ve had six vehicles over four decades, all auto, and have never had to have any transmission work done.
I’ll tell you exactly what will happen: there will be people retrofitting classic cars with electrical engines. If we’re at a point where we “all go electric”, that inherently means that the technology is going to be common enough for DIYers to become familiar with it, and when they are, there will be guys putting electric engines in 60s Mustangs and Corvettes. Probably at first it’ll be an expensive niche market, but it will trickle down eventually.
Or they stay gas. It’s not like they actually get driven all that much, they are for show. If they have to pay $10 a gallon for gas, then it’s not really a big factor, for as little as they drive.
Some classic cars still require leaded gasoline, something that would not be acceptable in a car that was actually driven on a regular basis.
Automatics all my life – by now I suppose I could learn basic keep-it-moving operation just as a matter of achieving an additional skill a-la learning to bake cakes, if I wanted to make the time… and had available some empty roads and a car with a cheaply expendable clutch to (a) learn and (b) keep in practice. I’m just too damn concerned with not getting into real traffic until I got the hang of it and with damaging the drivetrain until I get there.
As it is the better modern automatics pretty much have overcome the performance and economy disadvantage, but at the expense of, well, expense, if something breaks.
Still, with most vehicles sold in the USA no longer offering even the option of a manual (heck, ever more them even doing away with conventionally-geared automatics), and many of the holdouts limiting he manual to the bottom-of-the-line trim of the remaining models, the market limits our choices and reduces the incentive to learn.
When I bought my current car, they didn’t have any manual transmission ones on the lot. I told them I’d wait. I waited for six months for a manual trans version to arrive. This was in 2005 for a Scion xA. Granted they didn’t produce (or sell) very many of those regardless of the transmission.