I’ve never heard of a column shifter in my life.
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My car has a manual transmission and was stolen a couple years ago. The thief was caught a few hours later. He’s in his 20, so there is at least one manually-minded millennial mischief maker in the world.
AKA - “3-on-the-tree”
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When I took my test it was no automatics allowed. You had to borrow a three-on-the-tree.
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I thought that too, but it turned out the linkages inside the doors got sticky and needed to be lubed.
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I had one of these in a VW bug – it was a Slap-Stick transmission.
VW also has the great DOWN AND BELOW 1st for Reverse. Makes shifting really interesting on older cars.
Double Clutching was a skill I learned on my 1955 Porsche 356. That was a pain in the ass.
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I had a VW Rabbit with the same clutch. It could take anything short of a direct hit. Unfortunately, just about everything else in the car failed at some point or another. When I scrapped it, the clutch was the only thing still working.
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I’ve always been exceedingly grateful that my driver’s ed just happened by chance to be with a stick shift.
I like them and will be sad when it’s time to replace our Miata because I know it will be difficult to find sticks anymore.
Renault R4. Stick shift on the dashboard.
Oh what fun.
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I resisted moving to an automatic for years for two reasons. You could get better gas mileage with an automatic and you could get better performance with an automatic. My most recent car was an automatic. It gets better gas mileage than my old manual shift car. It also performs just as well now that every car has a turbocharger.
The technology has seriously improved. I gather that there are six or eight gears used internally. Old fashioned automatics had two or three. They are shifted by optimizing computer software, so acceleration is smooth and sure. It’s sweet to drive on twisty mountain roads with 1.5 lanes and steep drop offs.
I can still drive a stick shift when I have to, but why bother? I’m not one of those guys who has to manage the fans cooling my processor manually either and I rarely program in machine language anymore. OS fan algorithms are pretty good these days and compilers produce pretty good code. Sure, it’s fun to show off with a few lines of optimized assembly code now and then, but sometimes you just want to do something or go somewhere.
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Limping a '69 VW bus home without a clutch cable was my best applied use.
(ETA: Well, knowing how to double clutch anyway. What I was doing would probably more appropriately be referred to as zero clutching.)
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I need to setup a filter on my browser to change all instances of “millennial” to “kids these days”.
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On the tree!
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I’m scared about what you’re going to find…
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It’s a weird thing. My Irish family are baffled by Americans wanting manuals. Much of Europe the stick shift stayed the cheaper option. Autos costing extra and coming with some luxury cache. Whereas in the US starting the 80s stick has been increasingly something you look for and pay extra for.
I learned to drive on a manual. But I’ve never owned one or driven one regularly. Having had a life of cheap beaters, no older than 1980 but no younger than a decade old. I had to deal with what was available close to hand. Which meant automatics. And I certainly had no interest in paying extra for the sort of car that tended to have a manual.
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Yeah good modern automatics and dual clutches almost always out perform manuals on both fronts.
CVTs are the new sad.
I have one. It’s best described as confused.
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My wife had the devil’s time getting someone to teach her how to drive using a manual stick shift.
I had inherited my mom’s car with manual transmission, and couldn’t afford another vehicle.
When my wife and I had kids she realized that learning to drive was a desperation level skill that she needed (it’s difficult to take an autistic kid who bolts onto public transportation, and she was too terrified of distractions in the car to want to have the kids along with us when I would try to give her driving lessons.
I am also a terrible driving instructor).
We could not find a single instructor in Toronto (that we could access) who could teach her how to drive a manual transmission.
I also heard that a lot of manufacturers will not make them anymore.
I knew a guy in the late 80s with Alfa Romeo Spider his dad passed down to him. We were halfway across town when the clutch cable broke, luckily in first gear, luckily in the wee hours of the morning, and luckily in Wichita, KS. We simply cruised home at about 8 mph, getting out to push if we encountered a wee slope or a red light (so as to make it evident we had car trouble).
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Obsolete! As a Brit, I’ll have you know that everyone drives a manual in the UK! Obsolete, indeed!
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Ah, yes. The old three-on-a-tree.
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