One more data point, car dealer Carmax says that from August 2017 to August 2018, 3.7% of their sales were manual transmission. That’s down from 26% in 1995.
New Mexico was the highest percentage of manual, and Illinois the smallest.
ETA linky: https://www.carmax.com/articles/stick-shift-index
Plus, as already mentioned, who wants to vote in a poll just to say “no”?
My main car doesn’t even have gears, but I’m pleased to say that I’m furthering the cause of manual transmission knowledge to the current generation of new drivers. I sold my 5-speed manual Volkswagen to a 16 year old kid who is now going to get to learn to drive stick. In fact, his first time ever driving manual was while test driving my car with his dad. His dad has a Class A license. I don’t know if that means he’ll be a good teacher, but should at least mean he knows how to drive a stick.
If not obvious from context, yes, I can drive a manual.
American and yes. My current car is a stick (Mazda 3). I have driven sticks with both my right hand and my left (in Ireland).
I’m in Illinois, so that may explain why I think the 18% rate seems a bit high to me. I’m actually a little surprised that Illinois is the smallest percentage. Plenty of farming and trucking around the state, so I would expect a higher %age.
I, too, (to Gus above), have a Mazda 3 stick. This one is a 2014, and the last car I owned before this one was a 2004. It’s amazing to me how much lighter and easier the clutch has gotten in those ten years. I thought the 2004 was light as a feather, but after I bought the 2014, I had to drive it home, take a Lyft back up to the dealership the next day to bring the 2004 back home, and that clutch felt like a brick compared to the 2014.
Also had no problem in the UK driving the stick from the right side of the vehicle. The hardest thing for me was not shifting with my left hand but rather getting a sense of myself and where my vehicle was in the road whilst driving in the UK.
I’m American, used to have a Honda Civic del Sol with a 5 speed, but it’s been a while since I’ve driven anything. I think I could manage in an emergency, but wouldn’t want to do it in Chicago traffic.
I’m a little surprised too. Almost makes me question the scientific validity of this poll.
I can, but my wife and kids cannot, nor my brothers’ kids, nor can a lot of the people I work with
Took a commercial driving course in Coeur d’Alene back in 1974, and all I was taught was automatic because the only car the instructor had for us to use was a beat up sedan from 1972.
American, and I answered other. I drove a Saturn with a manual one summer about a dozen years ago, but haven’t driven a car with a stick since then unless you count racing games on the PC (I have a steering wheel with an H-pattern shifter and clutch pedal). I also ride a motorcycle, which is conceptually the same although physically implemented differently (hand lever for clutch, foot-operated sequential shifter).
I assume I could still manage if necessary but don’t know for sure.
Illinois was only measured as the smallest number of manual transmission buyers from Carmax. Maybe there aren’t many Carmax customers in IL, and maybe farmers and truckers don’t buy from Carmax anyway.
I’m also a (former) Mazda3 owner.
I prefer a stick but they are harder to find. I inherited my wife’s car now, and she liked automatic, so that’s what I drive now.
Both my kids learned to drive on a stick.
I feel like I am more in control of the car with a manual, which is probably an illusion, but that’s how it feels.
American. Didn’t learn to drive stick until later in life, because our first car was a manual.
Regards,
Shodan
Huh?
You know, old-OLD-school manual, like these.
The question I have for myself is, will I ever get to drive a stick again?
I can’t foresee any planned situation where it will happen. I have a good friend who he and his wife have manual cars, and maybe someday there will be a situation in which I need to drive one of them. I mostly learned by driving friends’ manual cars in college when they were drunk, but my friends and I don’t drink that much now. Maybe I’ll do one of those “drive an exotic” track day things, but many of those are not really row-your-own manuals.
Again I think Americans and Europeans sometimes exaggerate how much non-manual is a US (or North America) only thing. Manual transmissions are now a minority of global light vehicle production, there are other major markets where they have nearly disappeared in new cars (like Japan), and IME there is no problem renting a car with an automatic in Europe. Maybe in some more off the beaten path places it might be difficult, but in some of those places it’s questionable if it’s wise to drive.
On real % of Americans who can readily drive a manual I would guess it’s if anything less than 18% people said of themselves in a scientific poll. The poll result here is obviously skewed to the point of being completely out to lunch. Though it’s not just this forum. There’s IME a self selected tendency for internet discussions to be more pro-manual than real life almost where ever it comes up.
OTOH, it’s more like riding a bicycle than say playing the piano well to drive a manual. Basically anyone can learn before long, and most people who ever had some clue how can probably do it if they have to, especially with a little practice. I recall when my brother lent his manual truck to my son for summer, I was charged with teaching my son, and had to take the truck out for an hour myself to relearn it to the point where I could show anyone else. And that was some years ago, so I’d need to do that now too. But I still answered yes and don’t think that’s unreasonable.
I used to drive a stick but I haven’t in a couple of decades, so I didn’t say “yes”. I recently had to purchase a car and I was considering a Jeep but all of the ones I looked at were manual and considering my lack of recent experience and a recently broken right shoulder I decided it was not a good idea to attempt at this time. (the angle of movement in my right arm to shift constantly would be painful.)
I admit I am going by old impressions. I lived in Hungary from '98 to '03 and I rarely came across automatics. But that was almost 20 years ago. I do remember being bored, walking up the sidewalks and taking a glance inside the cars, and it was around 9 in 10 were manuals. When renting, it was possible to get an automatic, but a lot easier if you didn’t care.
Still, I visit every 3 years or so, and every cab I’ve taken is manual, and all my friends with cars who still live there have manual trannies. But they do tend to have older vehicles.
I’ve never driven a manual - my mom didn’t like 'em so she ensured that all vehicles owned by the family were automatics. So I never learned.
I don’t anticipate that this will ever be a problem.
When I learned to drive you got a restricted license (in PA) if you took your test on an automatic so of course I learned on a manual. Until I bought what will probably be my last car ever in 2007, most of the cars I drove regularly were manual. I bought an automatic in 2007 largely because our town is in love with 4-way stops. They are a tremendous waste of energy especially in this town where all houses have at least 30-40 foot setbacks and all you have to do is slow at intersections.
Once I witnessed a string of 5 cars at a 4-way stop on a major through street and the first four came to a full stop, then went, while the fifth just barrelled through. What can you infer from this?
The fifth was a police car.
Yes, but I’d have to drive around the neighborhood for a little bit, just to refresh my muscle memory.
