Don’t forget to practice on a non-synchronized transmission. If you can drive that, you can drive anything.
I’m sort of confused about all this talk about “learning” to drive a stick.
I took my girlfriend’s first generation Honda Civic for a few spins in college back in 1982 and just figured it out. It’s pretty intuitive, isn’t it?
In 1988 I bought my first brand new car, a Honda CRX. When the sales dude took me for a test drive I, again, just figured it out. I told him I didn’t really drive a stick and he looked kinda surprised, but, again, it’s completely intuitive.
Now, getting started on an uphill slope is a little intimidating, but after a few months it’s completely second nature.
Yeah, the OP’s statement that “they quit making cars and trucks with manual transmissions last year” is factually incorrect.
When I was learning to drive, 35 years ago, standard (manual) transmissions were fairly common on:
- Inexpensive / entry level vehicles (pickup trucks as well as cars)
- Performance / sporty cars
As I understand it, in that era, inexpensive vehicles had manual transmissions because they were cheaper to make than automatics.
Today, in the U.S., it’s fairly rare (but not unheard of) for entry-level vehicles to have manual transmissions, and most models of cars and trucks don’t even offer a manual option anymore. Even with performance cars, while manuals are often offered, I suspect that most of their sales are with automatics. (Anecdote: when I went to buy a Mustang, six years ago, I actually had a difficult time finding a dealer who had a model with a stick on the lot.)
I don’t have a cite, but I would imagine that a significant proportion of U.S. drivers have never driven a stick.
Is it worth teaching your son to drive manual? As others have noted, it’s not a bad skill to have, but unless one of the vehicles he’s going to be regularly driving (or have access to drive) is a stick, I’d worry more about building up his general driving skills, before introducing the complication of a manual.
manual transmissions are dying because for the vast majority of people who own cars, their car is an appliance which they need in order to get stuff done. A manual transmission would be a needless hassle for them, and their imminent disappearance is proof of that. Car companies don’t discontinue things because they’re big meanies, they discontinue things when it’s no longer profitable to try to sell them.
@_@
Internet Car Enthusiasts love to believe everyone drives for their own enjoyment, but that’s simply not the case. Enthusiasts are buried in the statistical noise of a market of 15-17 million car/truck sales every year.
must vary by region; IIRC the Mustang has one of the highest take rates for manual transmissions in the market. At least for the GT that is. I think it was somewhat lower for the V6 and I’ve no idea about the Ecoboost.
Driving a stick is like…a sex crime?
All the fun cars have sticks. Worth learning to drive one for that reason alone, IMHO. I’ve had some very fun cars!
Is it worth it to learn? No, not in the United States and especially if you don’t have a manual transmission vehicle to use daily.
Is it nice to know? Yes, if he wants to travel abroad or drive something that’s not a generic vehicle. Or if he really wants to feel how an engine and transmission work together to apply power.
But I didn’t teach my kids manual, and I don’t think any of their friends know how either. For the vast majority of Americans it’s not worth it.
Trim package is undoubtedly part of it. I was buying a V6 (IIRC, the 2012 models were the first year with the V6 Ecoboost engine), and I wanted to specifically test-drive one of those with a stick. I found one dealer in the western suburbs of Chicago (out of maybe a dozen), who had one on the lot.
no Mustang has had an Ecoboost V6. the Ecoboost 4 cylinder came out in 2015. The 2012 had the regular 3.7 V6.
Nope. I’m a very good driver and a boyfriend tried to teach me to drive stick some years ago and it was awful. I had no sense of how to do anything. I can see learning to do it when you first learn to drive but after 10-15 years of coasting along in an automatic a manual was completely beyond me. It’d be like if I tried to learn to bat left-handed after 30 years of being a righty.
A few lessons may not stick, but it you drive a stick long enough to get comfortable with it, it’s like riding a bicycle. It will always come back easily no matter how long it’s been.
I’d still be driving one if my knees hadn’t gone.
I stand corrected. Regardless…a V6 with a stick was difficult to locate.
I’ve only bought two brand new cars in my life, and both were manual transmissions. In both cases, they cost ~25% less than the same model with an automatic transmission.
However, in both cases, they were the only car on any lot within 50 mile radius with no expensive options tacked on. I suspect that was a big part of the price difference, and not the transmission itself. So if you want a cheap, basic, no frills vehicle and you don’t want to wait a month or two to special order one, find the one manual transmission in the metro area for the make and model you want. It will take a bit of looking, but you’ll be able to drive off the lot the day you purchase it. Assuming you can drive a stick, that is.
My first new car now has 290k miles on it. We’ve made exactly zero repairs to the transmission since we bought it. A lot is said about how much longer newer cars last, but I still can’t see an automatic transmission lasting 300k (and over 16 years) miles with no problems. Everyone I know has a story about when their (automatic) transmission required a repair that cost more than their car was worth.
The way I figure, manual transmissions are still a great deal for cheapskates like me.
My daughter became interested in the idea of driving when she was four. I had a manual transmission Jeep and I taught her to shift (I worked the clutch, she shifted). When she was 8 I took her to a park and let her drive (she was tall for her age). When she was 12 she asked for a car for xmas. I explained why it wasn’t practical.
I helped her buy a manual transmission car when she was 16. She is 27 now and has only owned manual transmission cars (as have I).
Here’s a situation where not knowing how to drive a stick had very bad consequences: A guy escapes from jail killing a deputy in the process leaving in a jail transport vehicle:
If he knew how to drive stick it’s less likely that he would have been shortly captured–and now will spend the rest of his life in prison!
It really depends on the person. I learned on my own pretty quickly, but I know people who just can’t get the hang of it, for some reason. That said, once my wife (when we were dating) had to drive my drunk ass home at 4 a.m. in my car, and she had never driven a stick shift before. I talked her through it, and she got me home while only stalling the car maybe three times at lights? That’s better than I did my first few times (though modern cars have a much more forgiving clutch than the cars I learned on–A Mercedes G-Wagen and a Mercedes W123 diesel from the late 70s.)
This, I think. I’m what my college fencing coach called a “slow physical learner.” It took me months to learn how to ride a bicycle, when most of the kids in my neighborhood took to it in a day or two.
When I was 17, and had been driving (automatics) for about a year, my dad bought a cheap little Plymouth hatchback as an extra car for the family. It had a stick, and he tried to teach me how to drive it, but it wasn’t intuitive, in the slightest, and I was terrible at it for quite a while. I eventually figured it out, and became pretty proficient at it, but I’m pretty certain that I’m not the only one who struggled with it at first.
Hey, I’m the last one to stealth brag about being physically coordinated, but: press the clutch in, put it in 1st, slowly release the clutch while slowly accelerating. When the RPMs reach a high-mid range, press the clutch in and shift to 2nd. Rinse and repeat for subsequent gears.
Do the reverse when slowing down, or just clutch and brake.
I mean, that’s all there is to it.
The tricky part is that the pressing of the gas and releasing of the clutch have to be done in a coordinated way. You can’t press on the gas too much or too little, and you can’t release the clutch too quickly or too slowly. Some people will get the feel of it quicker than others. Everyone can do it eventually–everyone used to drive manuals–but the necessity to keep trying is gone now that automatics are ubiquitous. If someone doesn’t have a desire to learn or can’t pick it up quickly, it’s probably not worth learning how to drive a manual these days.
One trick I saw mentioned for getting the feel of the clutch was to have the person only use the clutch to get started. Stop the car on a very slight slope so that it won’t take much to get it rolling. Have the person slowly let the clutch out and feel where it starts to engage. Have them press the clutch in and out to that first engage point. Eventually they can slowly fully engage the clutch and the car will go forward just from the idle of the engine. Then teach them how to use the gas and clutch at the same time. This way they can focus just one one thing rather than trying to learn the clutch and gas at the same time.
Every car I owned (for 45 years) until a couple of years ago was a stick. I finally got tired of it. Ever tried driving in stop and go traffic with a stick? It’s awful. I don’t recommend it for anyone who lives in a city with traffic.
Still, it’s a useful skill to know, but it will take periodic practice to keep up with.