Japan has Special Forces units?
It has U.S. military bases.
It’s actually pretty common. Almost every long-running TV series has this happen eventually.
One exception, Porsches. First gear is towards you (in a left-hand-drive car) and back, where you’d normally expect second gear to be. To shift into second, it’s forward, right, forward (like the 2nd-3rd shift in most cars).
I’m told they make bad autocross cars, because it’s not a straight shot between first and second.
And then there was my grandparents’ pickup truck with the three-speed on the column…
I had forgotten about that. And I learned to drive a manual in my dad’s near-death 944 :smack:
A manual column shift? I can scarcely imagine what a bitch that must have been.
Slight Hijack…
I remember watching some videos on youtube about SF units and happened upon a vid of some SAS guys training(which I can’t find atm). Any soldier that agrees to run from a search party for 7 days, deep in a jungle or the frigid alps, after which he’ll be forced to turn himself in for torture and interrogation, is definitely much more committed than your average soldier. Going off the assumption that our Special Forces aren’t too different, I’d say a stick shift is nothing.
Pictures of the 944’s shift knob on google images seems to indicate a conventional shift pattern.
Well, that would explain it.
Only the 5-speed 911s have the left/up reverse gate I suppose.
I have a hard time picturing a male over the age of 30 (or anyone of any age and gender who really likes cars) who can’t drive a stick shift. I insisted my kids learn on a stick just because it gives them a better feel for what a transmission does and better control of the vehicle – not to mention they may get a good deal on a used vehicle with a standard transmission because so many people can’t drive it!
When boys used to show up to pick up my daughter for dates, I took joy in explaining that she carried a knife in her purse and knew how to castrate a sheep. Then I’d pause and raise my eyebrows at them. Since most of them were already intimidated (I’m 6’4" tall and over 250 pounds), it made quite the impression.
Your daughter went out with sheep?
Oh, yeah. Dad taught me to drive in a '67 Fairlane with three on the tree. The location of the shifter didn’t make it any more awkward than the many manuals I’ve driven since then, but the linkage was loose and the clutch was vague. No question that I can shift my Miata much more quickly.
928s as well.
I believe the quote should be,“Your daughter went out with Hal Briston after his encounter with sheep?” 
::d&r::
First of all, “Special Forces”, i.e. the United States Special Operations Command encompasses a wide variety of missions and roles, from intelligence and propaganda to infiltration and counterinsurgency to logistics and infil/exfil to snatch-n-grab and rescue ops. USSOCOM includes the Army 75th Ranger Regiment, Navy Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen, Marine Corps Special Operations Support Group, and the Air Force Rescue Parajumpers (the last possibly the biggest badasses of all, and certainly the guys who never have to buy a drink in a military bar–their job is to drop, hop, or swim into a free-fire zone and rescue other soliders/sailors/airmen/Marines who are injured and pinned down). Although the USSOCOM is probably the most integrated of all mulit-service commands, there is no one set of “SF” skills or training courses; people are trained per the dictates of their MOS and specific job requriements, just like anyone else in the military. Most are not trained in a wide variety of vehicle skills except as the specifics of their job requries; when you see Steven Seagal portraying a SEAL who plans to escape by taking off in a helicopoter, that is nothing but the magic of Hollywood screenwriters; there is virtually no reason that a SEAL would be trained for the several hundred flight-hours (plus a couple thousand training hours) required to be rated to fly a helicopter. (Of course, if you’re watching a movie with Steven Seagal–or Charlie Sheen–portraying a Navy SEAL–you should have already accepted a high level of suspension of disbelief already.)
However, an operator who is training for infil or counterinsurgency operations in a primitive country will probably receive at least cursory familiarization with the local customs, modes of transportation, communication, et cetera. And while I agree that the general American public is significantly ignorant of how to operate a manual transmission vehicle–based on my experience, Santo Rugger, I wouldn’t guess more than one person in five has experience operating a manual transmission vehicle–I would expect that the sort of person cut out for SOCOM work will either already be more experienced or will easily pick up such a skill as a matter of course. If not, as Bear_Nenno notes, USSOCOM does send people out to private or DoJ law enforcement training courses for a number of skill sets that are outside of normal military operations, including evasive driving, forensics, communications, et cetera.
I don’t know your “good friend in the Army special forces HALO team” (nor do I know of such a “team”, although many SOCOM personnel are training in HALO operations) but I will note that most people that talk about such things are at least exaggerating their experiences and often inflating their claims beyond personal experience. There would be little use in training a Delta operator who specializes in mountain ground infil ops to fly a helicopter or sail a tri-hull. Even setting aside all of the “Special Forces” people who never set foot behind lines, the field operators train very intensively to do a few very specific things–hostage rescue, sniping/countersniping, counterinsurgency and insurgent training, recon and info gathering, et cetera. They’re not Robert Ludlum superheroes, they’re guys with a high degree of fitness, a useful surfit of intellect and judgment, an incredible amount of determination and willpower, and the skills that let them do their particular job.
Stranger
M4 Sherman Medium Tank, circa 1942? Automatic
IIRC, the Sherman was one of the first military vehicles to feature automatic transmission, and this was cited in a couple of places as one of its advantages over the Panzers: simplicity of operation.
That said, I’ve heard that automatics can be a pain in the ass to repair if something goes wrong. I dunno about any of that, the extent of my automotive knowledge is changing tires and resetting fuse breakers after getting my oil changed at Wal Mart.
Oh, and I can drive stick. 
Learned in the Boy Scouts of all places. Since joining the military, the only military vehicles I have driven are a variety of unmarked Dodge Caravans, all automatic transmissions, and the training course for operating them consisted of how to fill out the paperwork to give to the police after we get in a traffic accident. Even includes a neat little illustration of a wide variety of intersections all overlaid on eachother, where we just bold in the roads that were actually at the intersection, and we can draw in where all the vehicles were while on the scene.
Actually Dacia’s had a pretty standard shift pattern. The only notable exception in shift patterns as mentioned by the other Dopers is the location of reverse, and in some cases the location of first gear (there is at least one exception I can think of in western cars where first gear is bottom left instead of top left of the H-pattern).
Reverse gear these days in production cars has to deal with some type of interlock whose operation is not always intuitive. For example, on my 89 Ford Probe GT Reverse cannot be engaged directly from 5th. you have to return the shifter to neutral (as my uncle found out, thank goodness!) A fear years ago I rented an Opel Vectra in Germany. On this car there is a ring under the handle that you have to pull up with index and middle finger in order to move the shifter into reverse. On a VW Jetta / Bora, the entire shifter has to be pressed “in” to allow it to shift into reverse. While on my BMW E39 to engage reverse you have to shove the gear lever extra hard to move it to the reverse detent.
Your other complications when commandeering a strange vehicle besides shift patterns and clutch feels would have to do with the location and layout of controls. Probably not necessary for quicck action chases but if you need to use your headlights, high beams, or windshield wipers locating the necessary controls might be harder than you’d think!
Now if you want a real challenge try commandeering a Ford Model T. That car does not have a standard shift pattern or pedal pattern!! 
Actually it wasn’t so bad and was available on quite a few cars back in the day (so I’ve heard). My parents owned a 1966 Opel Rekord, which had a 3-speed column mounted shifter. First gear was top towards you. Second was bottom away from you, and 3rd was bottom towards you. Reverse was top away-from-you. A classic H pattern, just turned on its side. Personally I detest column mounted shifter and those video game gear changing paddles, but can handle them all if necessary.
This never stops Jason Bourne from turning a Cooper Mini or a Lada taxi into a supercar capable of outrunning anything in a John Frankenheimer film. Of course, Bourne is a bit above your typical Special Forces troop.
Stranger
No cite, but I used to hang out with Rangers who told me, surprisingly, that it was fairly standard for them to use motorcycles. Apparently this is the quickest way to disperse several teams out the back of a C-130 and across a huge airfield (taking airfields is apparently a Ranger specialty.)
No cite, but I tried to learn to drive on a stick & gave up. I can sort of do it in theory. In practice, I can manage a bit, if by “drive” you mean “manage to make the transmission disconnect & drop out the bottom.”
I got my license after switching to auto.