I think another important factor is how motivated the student is to learn. My mom gave my son her Mini Cooper when he still only had his permit. He’s smart, mechanically inclined, and was READY. It took one very brief lesson. He’d been driving my car for several weeks already so he was familiar with setting the mirrors, starting ans stopping, turns etc.
When I was at school in Illinois I’d posted on a ride share board that I’d like a passenger to share driving and expenses to Washington D.C. The guy who responded did not tell me until I’d been driving for about 6 hours and felt ready to switch that he could not drive stick. It was not because those hours had been so filled with scintillating conversation that he didn’t have time to mention it.
I drove to a large flat empty parking lot and tried valiantly to teach him. He was having none of it. I’d be very surprised if he’s learned how since.
I actually would recommend the opposite to what everyone else is suggesting. My mother taught me stick by stopping the car on a steep up hill and then switching places. She kept her hand on the emergency brake so we wouldn’t go too far backwards if I miffed it, and it gave me chance to get a good feel of just when things engaged. Of course, by that time I had already had a lesson with my dad where he taught me about how engines and gears work and probably the history of the internal combustion engine as well (he was an engineer and never could give a short easy answer to questions).
Seems to have returned to normal. We’ll try again tomorrow on a more level surface.She is very motivated to learn, mainly because a friend of hers got a stick shift for her first car but can’t even drive it.(show off😉)
I’m like your wife. Two different people on three different occasions have tired to teach me, taking hours to do so, and I just can’t do it. I can drive straight in first or second gear, but trying to make a turn, or get into third or higher, nope. Stall, stall, stall. I don’t understand why anyone would want to make driving so much more complicated, but they’re welcome to do so as long as they stop trying to force me to figure it out.
This, oh so very much. I can’t tell you how many times my family has ribbed me about my inability to drive stick. I’ve been all but excommunicated from various automotive forums and other sites simply for admitting that I can’t drive stick. It’s usually met with “Automatic? Learn to drive, dumbass” or “Aren’t you just absolutely bored?” or even “Learn stick so you can stop texting and driving”. (I will never use my mobile while I’m driving, btw. The previous statement is shared among a lot of stick-drivers that think automatic drivers just use the extra time to distract ourselves).
I mean, I get it. You all (generalized) enjoy “feeling the road” and “connecting with the car”. I simply want to get to my destinations and back again.
I’d go a step farther an ask the OP if learning to drive a stick is actually something the person wants or needs to do. I know automatic cars aren’t the norm overseas, but I’ve done some research and most rental agencies do have them. Of course if he’s staying with friends and they only have manuals it’s a different story, and I’d say “good luck”. I tried to teach my sister in my old car (a manual because it was cheap junk, not because I liked it), and gave up. If I hadn’t learned because it was the only car available to me I’d have zero interest in learning.
The way I’ve taught was just to start somewhere flat and not even use the throttle. Just put it in first, delicately lift release the clutch to learn the feel and bite, and get the car rolling just using the clutch. After that, I introduce the gas pedal. It’s worked well so far. My wife managed to learn one night when she came to get me from a nearby bar and I was too inebriated to drive. She only had to drive about a mile and a half home in quiet 3 a.m. traffic, but she got us home without any bucking or anything, just a couple stalls at red lights which she quickly corrected on restart. I was impressed, as she had never driven stick before. This was with a Mazda3. The last few generations of cars, I find, are quite forgiving. I learned on a 1980 diesel Mercedes W123, which had a much heavier clutch with a pretty strong and precise bite to it. I stalled that sucker left and right the first week or so I drove it.
I think it is availability of automatics.
Also fewer kids growing up with out farm machinery around.
Less interest in cars by young people on average.
Fewer people even want to know how things work. I have a sister like that, only wants to know one way to do something, if that does not work, just wants her SO to fix it or do it for her. She can drive a manual but her mind set is like that about most things.
Computers do what you tell them to do, not what you want them to do.
Change gears with only your thumb and index finger on the shifting lever. This process is not heavy lifting. Acquire an easy touch for feeling the thing mesh gears properly. Move it gently, with a delicate touch – it is a precision machine and it will go in gear easily when it is ready. When you learn how to operate a machine with this feel, it will be almost orgasmic.
There’s a school of thought (and I usually adhere to it, myself) that you shouldn’t shift gears while turning, anyway. You should be in the correct gear before you turn, so you do all your shifting either when you brake into the turn or as you’re on the straight out of the turn, since you don’t want to disrupt your car’s balance mid-turn (this doesn’t really matter much in normal driving, though). So, I wouldn’t beat myself up over not shifting and turning at the same time. Now, mind you, I do do it from time to time, but generally, I try to be in the right gear as I hit the turn.
I taught all my friends stick on my old honda crx. My advice:
Try to do it when you are about to change the clutch anyway.
The advice about gas and clutch being opposite is just wrong, I don’t know why everybody explains it like that, even people who have driven stick for years. You don’t lift your foot off the clutch, you keep it pressed until it engages.
Let them know that different cars have different clutch behaviors, and the clutch changes as it gets worn or adjusted.
Maybe it’s just me, but my final exam is having students go in reverse, uphill, over a speed bump, without burning the clutch, dying out, or ramming the bump.
The first lesson is usually to have them crawl forward slowly while manipulating the clutch and gas. I usually never need to take them on a regular road, just all in a parking lot. Of course, they can drive already. I usually just explain shifting, I don’t take them on the road.
But conversely, most people today don’t need to learn how to drive stick. In fact, the last car I bought didn’t even come in standard. If I insisted, it would have to be special ordered and take 3-6 months.
Not sure about Asia but in Europe automatics are widely available.
One thing I would consider is driving somewhere like the UK where you would be driving on the opposite side of the road. I think a relatively inexperienced manual driver would struggle to cope with both conditions.
When I go back to Europe to visit family, I always rent a car. Automatics are almost twice as much to rent, IIRC. I always rent a manual because it’s cheaper by far.
Driving on the “wrong” side of the road takes some adjusting to, though! I always do a few turns around the rental parking lot to acclimate before flinging myself onto the M1, ring roads and other madness.
Man, I had a really hard time driving a manual car in England, everything just felt weird. I was sitting on the other side of the car, but I used my feet the same way as in the US. It really was hard for me.
I personally found that part pretty easy. The tricky part for me was fully getting used to the spacial awareness of driving from the right side of the car. Somehow, my mental map always wanted to put my car farther to the right than it really was. Right out of the rental car parking lot, I managed to brush my left/passenger side mirror against a post. (No damage, it just folded back.) I felt pretty dumb and it took me a good couple hours to really feel like I knew where I was exactly on the road. It seemed to me like that part should be pretty easy, but, for some reason for me, it took some getting used to.
I think it’s a useful skill to have. I’ve been in a few situations where the only vehicle option I had was a stick, so I was glad I learned it. Now, for the vast majority of people, this probably won’t be an issue, but if you travel outside the US a lot and drive, it does help. And even in the US, there’s been a couple times I needed to drive a friend’s car, and his or her car was a standard. Now, the flip side of owning a standard transmission vehicle is that fewer people are able to drive one, so if you’re doing a long trip with someone and own a manual transmission car (like I do), you’ll be doing all the driving (which also may work out well for you if you don’t like other people driving your car.)
