I got a screaming deal on a new Challenger SRT in part because it’s a 6 speed manual. The vast majority of buyers want autos. Unlike the 1960’s muscle car era, today’s automatic transmissions are, in most ways, superior to manual transmissions. However, for pure enjoyment of the driving experience you just can’t beat a stick shift.
I can drive regular stick and non-synchronized.
I can also ride tank shift and jockey shift motorcycles.
I learned on a automatic, but learned to drive a stick soon after, my dad had a truck for his business, a 3 on the tree manual. I’ve driven dump trucks, and a bunch of other things with a manual clutch. I bought a Kubota tractor a few years ago, why a hydrostatic trans, because it’s a lot easier when doing loader work.
I think the nail in the manual tranny coffin was the cellphone. Not easy to talk when you’re in traffic.
I doubt that. I think most of the cars on the road these days in Panama are automatics, especially in urban areas.
I had trouble getting the hang of a manual when I was first learning to drive, and at first drove automatics. I knew how to drive shift, but didn’t really do much of it until I moved to Panama in the early 1990s and all the field vehicles were manual. The first car I bought here was also a manual, which forced me to get up to speed as well.
But I haven’t had a manual for decades. It’s just too much of a pain in the ass in city traffic, where I do most of my driving.
I learned on a 1963 VW bug, the kind you had to get out of and push uphill (It was a hand-me-down). I could drive stick well for a few years, but lost the skill after driving automatics for a while. The next time I had to drive a stick, I felt insecure and tended to ride the clutch. No, thanks, too much of a nuisance. I haven’t driven a stick in maybe may 25, 30 years.
A couple decades ago, people used to think driving stick was cool and sexy, and automatics for dorky losers. But now, every so often I get caught behind a car that lurches when it starts up after a light. Oh, I think, someone driving a stick who shouldn’t. And what the heck would they do if they were someplace with hills.
[QUOTE=bubba001;21505557I think the nail in the manual tranny coffin was the cellphone. Not easy to talk when you’re in traffic.[/QUOTE]
I think you’re right.
Yes. The last time I actually did regularly was a vehicle I sold in IIRC 2000. I’d be very rusty.
Good point. Are you thinking that getting rid of automatic transmission vehicles will get people to stop talking on their cellphones when they are supposed to be driving?
Yes. I did in America, and still do now that I’m living in Australia. Traffic isn’t a big issue in the town where I live; if I lived in Melbourne or Sydney, I might consider it, but both those cities have a robust mass transit system that I’d probably use rather than commuting by car.
Caveat: when I visit family in the States, and hire a car, I get an automatic. Switching sides of the road is easy, but the rest starts to add up enough that I’d as soon not mess with it. Turn signals are a big enough pain in the neck. That, and my impression is getting a rental with a stick shift would be difficult in America.
Nope. The two cars I have owned, the last one discarded 31 years ago, were both automatics. I had a roommate back in the day who tried to teach me on his car. We went to a wide, open parking lot. But just as I felt I was getting the hang of it, we had to leave to go do something else, and we never got around to it again.
Yes (UK citizen). The only time I’ve driven an automatic was in Canada/US on holiday.
I can drive a stick, and still do. Honda Civic manual. My wife drives it too.
Although I have no kids, I’ve taught a few people to drive stick in my time. I taught my sister, and my first girlfriend. I also “taught” my wife about ten years ago when we bought a manual car. She wanted a manual, and said that she could drive one, but it had been so long that she really wasn’t very good, and I had to help her out a bit to get back in the groove.
I must say, though, that if I had a five-days-a-week commute in heavy traffic, like so many Americans, there’s no way I’d want to shift gears all the time. I’ve been in a few terrible Southern California traffic jams in the last ten years, and the constant working with the clutch and gears gets old very quickly in those circumstances.
I tend to agree.
There was a time when a significant percentage of cars on the road were manuals, and it made sense to learn how to drive one in case you ever needed to in an emergency. But now so many cars are autos that learning to drive a manual is not something anyone really needs to do.
Owning a manual, though, can help you if someone tries to steal it.
Not quite true.
In Australia, for example, the percentage of new cars sold with a manual transmission is down in the single digits, like in the US. Most people I know in Australia drive automatics, and in urban areas manuals are very unusual. I grew up in Australia with a lot of friends who came off farms, and many of them drove manual utes, pickup trucks, or cars, but even in rural areas many Aussies have moved to autos.
Actually, at the high end, plenty of sports and exotics cars are no longer even available with a regular stick shift and third pedal clutch.
Ferrari doesn’t make a manual transmission at all, and neither does Lamborghini. I think all McLarens ship with their paddle-shift automatic. You can still buy a Porsche with a manual, but the vast majority of Porsches are sold with the company’s PDK automatic transmission, and the top-of-the-line 911 Turbo can’t be had with a manual gearbox.
These days, especially on sports cars, about the ONLY advantage that a manual transmission provides is fun, which is a rather subjective thing. There was a time when manuals got better fuel consumption; they don’t anymore. There was a time when manuals, in the hands of an experienced driver, were considerably faster off the line; they’re not anymore. The combination of vastly improved automatic gearboxes, computer technology that enables optimal shifting for performance or fuel economy, and paddle shifters that allow the user to take control, means that there’s really not much reason these days to prefer a manual over an automatic apart from the challenge and the tactile pleasure of changing gears. Motor racing didn’t move to dual-clutch automatic transmissions with paddle shifters for nothing; they did it because it allows faster lap times.
Which can not be overestimated. 
I definitely got more pleasure out of driving my manual 1994 Tracer than I do steering my 2014 ford focus.
My “other” vote was I haven’t tried in 30+ years, so I have no idea if there’s any trace of that skill left. I seriously doubt it.
The best reason to own a manual transmission car these days seems to be as a theft deterrent. I have read many anecdotes of car-thief wanna-bes being stymied by a stick.
It may be a bit anecdotal, but I also feel much more incontrol driving in inclement weather with a manual.
That sounds about right to me, though in my urban area, I would say that it’s less than 18% from my personal experience of finding someone who is able to drive my car (which is a stick.) I’d guess closer to 1 in 10. I’m 43, I like sticks, even in traffic (and I might be the lone nut who likes it especially in traffic, because it gives me something to do.)
According to my father-in-law, who’s a gearhead, and a Corvette aficionado, there’s no small stink among Vette fans about Chevrolet’s plans to not even offer a manual transmission on the next generation of the Corvette, despite the fact that, as you note, it’s the direction that that segment of the industry is going in.
I don’t want to necessarily hijack this thread, but what do people find difficult about driving a manual transmission anyway?
Start in 1st gear: when revs get high switch to 2nd
When revs get high switch to 3rd, etc…
All you need to do is press a pedal and pull a lever. Is this too difficult to coordinate? I taught myself how to drive stick, and three-in-the-tree instantly. Of course it took maybe a day or two to get proficient.
It took me quite a while to get proficient with it, but then, I’m what my college fencing coach called “a slow physical learner.” Adding in the working of the clutch to everything else, and having to make sure you have the accelerator pressed down far enough to not stall the car when you release the clutch is a bit of an art, IMO – especially if you’re stopped on a hill.
(I’ll also add that I suspect that a fair number of drivers today drive using their left foot on the brake pedal, rather than using their right for both the accelerator and the brake, which’d make driving with a clutch a real challenge.)