Best opening paragraph ever. I assume she has very long arms.
Shifting gears, the feel of the clutch underneath your hand. These mark the experience behind the wheel of a manual transmission car — now a rare breed in the U.S.
*snerk* 
VERY long arms. Or have I just been doing it wrong all these years?
I’ve driven only automatic most of my life since I got my license, but I did have to learn to drive manual at one point and absolutely hated it! I was stationed at Kadena AFB in Okinawa and since most of the base’s vehicles were manual, we had to learn how to drive them.
It is just too much you have to deal with, not only do you have to frequently shift gears, but I also found out at that point there is also a third pedal too! I was terrible at it and never drove manual vehicles again after I left the base.
It is just so much easier to just put it in drive and not have to worry about it anymore.
My first 4-5 cars were all manual transmission. Learning to drive that first one, a Fiat 128 (for which the term “car” was rather charitable) was quite an adventure in lurching and terror. But it became second nature, relatively quickly.
We owned only manual cars, until I got our first minivan in the late 1990s. Since then we’ve gravitated toward larger / taller cars (as we age), but it’s like riding a bicycle. Until our last manual vehicle died in late 2020 (it was nearly 22 years old), I could swap between them quite easily.
I’ve never driven a manual in my life. Even my dad never drove a manual that I can recall.
For me, driving is never “fun”. It’s a chore.
Or maybe she’s an F1 racer!
Difference Between Regular & F1 Car Clutch: Working & More | dubizzle.
ETA also, didn’t some really old cars have clutches near the steering wheel?
It’s fascinating to read this kind of stuff on the Dope. Here I am an inveterate manual driver, and unless they all go extinct or are outlawed, will continue to be so, and regularly go for pleasure drives in the countryside when the weather cooperates.
Irony is that I used to feel like this, in my ignorant youth:
I had a manual forced upon me on my 22nd birthday by my father, but very quickly picked up on it. He screwed up with his next gift car (for college graduation) tho, and got me an automatic, which I hated. Couldn’t wait to get a manual again, then I quickly learned heel-and-toe downshifting, which made things even more enjoyable, and I was off, again.
I drove stick for years. I think I started this thread but am too lazy to check.
But I never mastered both keeping my eyes on the road and keeping my hand close to the clutch. I blame society.
Agreed. Driving is necessary to get around in this country, but I have never really enjoyed it much and would rather not have to drive if I had a choice in the matter. I didn’t even finally start driving until I was 23.
That is why I am perfectly fine with self-driving cars, and might like one once all the kinks are worked out. I love the adaptive cruise control on my car and use it frequently. All I have to do is occasionally make small adjustments in steering and the car pretty much drives itself.
I handed over my 1995 Pontiac Sunfire to my son, who put another 100,000 miles on it. It finally wore out all the shift linkage and it turned out there were no parts available, except possibly salvaged from a wreck that had at least that many miles on it.
I’m pretty sure that somewhere out there, he could have found at least a rebuilt automatic for a 1995 Sunfire, and gotten a warranty on it, as well.
I loved my manual Jetta, but the year I was driving 1.25 hours each way n stop and go traffic to my job many years ago pretty much convinced me to get rid of it. I still like renting them when I travel to Europe, though.
I almost had that problem with my 1995 Saturn. The shift linkage broke, and the mechanic was like “They don’t actually make this part anymore, but I think we have something that will work”. And whatever they used did work, at least for a few more years until I got a newer car.
Heh, part of the reason I got a Honda Fit was that the first gear was quite a crawler gear. Difficult to stall, and with a 4.62 final drive ratio you could crawl along at really low speeds without stalling it. When I gave it to my niece and nephew, I got the BRZ. Since I was still spending about the same hour commuting, I made sure it could crawl, too. It has 4.30 rear gears, so the first gear is largely the same. Until traffic really starts moving, it’s mostly one foot driving.
I still have the WRX that the Fit replaced for a daily driver. It’s really tall first gear is great for drag racing, no fun for crawling at less than 5 mph.
I think she just misspelled ‘motorcycle’, the very best kind of manual transmission vehicle.
That was a big downside for us, where we currently live - some of the worst traffic in the country, and manual transmission can be really, really fatiguing.
There was one stretch of road where I would invariably get stuck at a traffic light, on a fairly steep uphill bit. I got pretty good at using all 4 limbs to get going without rolling back into the car behind me. One foot on the clutch, one foot on the gas, one hand on the steering wheel, and one on the parking brake. IIRC, I’d put the brake on, put the clutch in with the left foot, start giving it gas with the right foot, and start letting the clutch out while simultaneously lowering the parking brake lever.
In college I had a friend who had (I think) a Mustang or some muscle-type car (30 years ago now so dim memory). It was a stick-shift and he swore he would only ever have a stick-shift.
Some years later I saw him and he had a new car that was an automatic. I asked him about it and he said a stick, especially one with a heavy clutch like his did, absolutely sucked in city traffic, day-after-day, so he switched.
[I may have said this a few years ago, I did not go back and scan the thread]
I had a couple of manual transmission cars in the olden days, and didn’t mind driving them. I didn’t think it was any more “fun” than any other car, though.
Now that I’ve transitioned to EVs, I’ll never buy a manual or an automatic again.
This is why I fail to understand why people love stickshifts so much. I just don’t get it.
So no, absolutely no plans to buy a stickshift. Ever.
A lot of these things really come down to ego or being contrarian. But it’s nice to have an increasingly rare skill, I suppose. It might be useful in some very limited circumstances. It is probably true that technology has made the difference in efficiencies larger over time.