I taught a 16-year-old (not my son) to drive a stick. It was easy. I checked online and there's a place that will teach you the basics for $295. I'd do it for half. There's not much demand for that, unfortunately.
The biggest magic tricks to teaching were (1) teaching him to think about gear changes before actually doing them, and (2) being relaxed about mistakes.
For (1) I would drive, and have him tell me when to shift. This gets over the intellectual hurdle of coordinating engine speed with road speed.
For (2), I just said, "OK, you're going to stall the car, and you're going to grind the gears. Everybody does. It's no big deal. Here, watch, I'll do it." Then I'd stall & grind the gears, show him to get out of the grinding, and laugh about it. I think anxiety is the biggest problem.
I'm sure if it's your own son or daughter, it gets more complicated :)
I've taught around a dozen folks how to drive stick, and I finally found a method that reliably worked to make it "click" more quickly. When they get in the car, I tell them to forget about the gas and brake pedals and pretend the only pedal that exists is the clutch.
In first gear, I have them release it slowly until the car starts going, then have them push it in until the car rolls to a stop. Take breaks, explain what the clutch is doing. Repeat until they start getting bored.
Then introduce the brake pedal. Tada! You can stop more quickly now.
Finally, the gas pedal. You can push it until the engine shrieks in protest! If only there were a way to get it to quiet down but still keep your speed....
Of course, you need a very large, very flat surface for this method to work. But I've had a lot more success since starting to do it this way.
This is basically how I taught my son to drive a manual. I used a low-torque Toyota Corolla with a 5-speed manual. I found a large, flat area—a mega-church parking lot—and, in first gear, told him he can do whatever he wants, as long as he doesn't touch the throttle. He quickly discovered the point at which the clutch bit—began to engage—and learned to get the car rolling without killing the engine.
After an hour or so, he had mastered the engaging the clutch and I began to add the next steps. A couple sessions and he had the whole thing down.
Eventually I taught him how to double-clutch, rev-match when downshifting, and even how to float the shift with no clutch at all.
Today he owns a manual trans performance car (Z06) and has a great fondness for manuals.
This is how I learned (via the Matt Farah videos on YouTube), basically. Just go somewhere quiet and flat and learn to get moving in first with just slipping the clutch. You should be able to feather it enough until you have sufficient momentum that you can ease off of it without ever using the gas, and bingo, you're in first gear. Not only is it fantastic for learning how to get into first, but it helps you learn your car's clutch bite point, which makes shifting into other gears even easier.
I still had a horrible first drive from the dealer to the house, probably stalled 20 times (lots of small hills in Daly City, near SF) and annoyed some drivers behind me, but it worked out in the end.
I guess if your engine has enough torque you can get going in first with zero additional throttle... But having driven some serious clunkers myself, a lot of small engines cannot even get the vehicle going without adding a little throttle while letting out the clutch, and just stall.
Yep, this "just start with the clutch pedal" method was how I was taught 35 years ago and it's how I just taught my neighbor's 17yo last year. I've taken my 16yo son out a couple times as well, but he honestly isn't all that into it.
This is great advice - I learned a slightly different way…
I’d saved up for a while when I was 20ish, and I wanted a NEW car. Only thing I could get a loan for was the cheapest offering - a stripped manual Honda Fit. I fell in love with it and ordered one from Japan (they didn’t have a fully stripped version for sale in my town, so it was a “special” order).
Long story short, I learned to drive stick for the first time when I picked it up from the lot with zero miles and had to drive it home, and then to work the next day… that first commute was UGLY. But I more or less had the hang of it by the time I got home that night. I still drive that car daily almost two decades later - and I absolutely still love it. It’s never needed one thing beyond regular maintenance in all those 150k miles. They literally don’t make ‘um like that any more.
Pretty scary that you were allowed to do that, where I am in the world if you take your driving test in an automatic car you only get an automatic licence, but if you take it in a manual car you can drive manual and automatic
I learned after buying my first car too. I bought a car from my uncle in Mississippi and had to get it home to Austin. It was rough through Louisiana, but I had it down by the time I hit Texas.
It's also worth noting that you can skip gears. For example going straight from two to four and then six when accelerating hard. It depends on the car, engine size/power, conditions, gradient and a few other things. Same when changing down. I'm personally a fan of using the gearbox to decelerate rather than just the brake.
I'm currently rocking a 20 year old Nissan Micra "Twister" with an auto gearbox - a proper granddad car (I am as it turns out). It weighs about two kilos and has about 2 BHP but it is a bit of a Q ship. I've seen off some expensive cars at roundabouts with some local knowledge a careful choice of lane and a stomp on power when it counts. It does make some odd noises when turning right (a CV boot is quite fucked). Lane one on a roundabout is often quicker than lane two due to less curvature, unless you can transition from lane two to one to straighten it out.
An auto always has some drive engaged so a standing start is often quicker but in a manual you can stomp on the accelerator and run up say 4000 RPM and give your clutch a good old work out whilst using the brake to hold in place. If you have enough power, you can start off in second or ideally you have one of those flappy paddle jobs and stay in first for about a half second and then change up as you go.
I prefer a manual box - you feel more engaged with the vehicle but then an auto can also be played with too. You can make it change up and down when you get the hang of it by blipping the throttle and getting to know what it wants to do in certain circumstances.
I have had multiple manual cars and do not understand what you mean when you say you enjoy a 2-4-6 shift when driving hard. I skip gears when I’m driving slow and some cars, like the Corvette, have gates to force a 1 -> 4 under a certain RPM.
IMO, the best part of a manual performance car is chirping tires (or fully breaking them loose!) on a 2nd to 3rd shift in a turbo car with no-lift-shift.
I love the feel of going straight from 2-4 on a car with a really tight shifting pattern. Used to drive my dad’s MGB a lot and boy was that car technically a mess, but the shift from 2-4 on an open country road was magic. As long as you didn’t think too much about the missing 5th gear, the useless seatbelts, or the reverse lights that only came on when they felt like it.
Yep, it's typically how I get up to speed if I'm driving my girlfriends car. NA6 Miatas had no power stock, so a nice full pot through 1, 2, and 3 then up in to 5th will get me to ~50-60 mph and in to cruising revs.
I wonder if there's a kind of collective background general knowledge that has dissipated as auto has become more common? What prompts this is just that no-one I knew had any great difficulty with clutch & gears when I learned to drive (early '80's). Autos (in rural UK) were pretty rare, and everyone before starting to drive had at least a vague idea of how to use the controls, and at least a majority of the boys had a rough idea of the underlying mechanisms.
I lived on a country road and learned when I was 12 by stealing my mother's car (a Fiat 500) before she got home from work. Two or three goes and I was away. Admittedly concentrating on the clutch I did forget to steer and went off-road a couple of times.
So much emphasis on thinking about gear changes does seem a bit unfamiliar to me - but it could just be since my first driving experience was also manual, I was learning all this in the background while my main focus was trying not to hit anything.
Never did anything as exciting as you but I do feel like maybe being a passenger for so many years gives you an ear for when a gear change is needed, and you hear "sorry, wrong gear" and feel the lack of acceleration or whatever. As for /why/, I just imagined cycling up a hill.
I live in Europe where driving stick was the norm until the arrival of hybrid and electrical cars. I have predominantly driven stick, and only recently driven an automatic hybrid car. From a comfort point of view I do prefer an automatic, although some petrol heads may keep preferring driving stick. However, I suspect it will become a niche within a generation.
Manual is niche in Norway now. The manual sale is close to zero. And you will have problems selling your old manual car. This shift started before EV’s took over the new car market. But it’s not that many years since manual were completely normal. Point is that preferences changes quickly.
I lived in Europe and I'm back for few months. Automatic rental car costs 2x of normal, so naturally I'm driving stick. I absolutely hate it. It's an absolutely ridiculous bullshit that needs to go (together with ICE's). I firmly believe the only reason stick is still being sold is so that rental companies could gauge their customers.
This whole stick shift thing is funny, whole generations learned driving stick in Europe from day 1. Up to the point where using an automatic feels strange for the first couple of kilometers.
I agree, my aunt got old very cheap car for me and my cousin to learn how to drive, we had one 30 minute session of yelling and I never drove it again.
don't forget the first time you have to start on a hill. or brake. first time I had to brake hard I forgot to put in the clutch and that was the whole front end.
Many modern stickshifts have hill assist, so if you're fortunate enough to be teaching on a model with this, you either want to temporarily disable it (if possible) or at least communicate the right way to do it and what might happen if they're going to driver an older car.
This is why I just use the parking brake to hold the car in place. Then I only really have to coordinate the use of the clutch and the accelerator without having to worry about the car moving back, no matter how steep the hill.
You just have to feel the car pushing foward while the parking brake is still engaged and just release the parking brake while the car starts moving forward.
You just expressed how I did car competency with my kids.
The best was snow!
Tip for parents who are teaching snow driving in a front wheel drive vehicle: get the car moving and set the emergency brake. The rear tires will lock and the rear end will be all over the place. Pick a wide road with a forgiving shoulder.
They will have to counter steer and keep the front of the car under control. Later, trigger a slide with that brake (assuming your car has one you can use that way) and watch them handle it like a champ!
We had a good time frankly. Drove an older, manual car. Minor damage was not a big deal. Made the whole experience nice, reasonably relaxed, fun.
I had a summer internship where I got bored and read wikipedia a lot. Reading about engines and transmissions there helped me a lot when I learned to drive stick. Being able to visualize what was mechanically happening gave me a little bit better intuition about what to do. I still stalled, of course, but I felt like I had a better roadmap on how to improve.
I love to drive manual transmissions, and taught my kids how to drive them.
My last stick car (I'm between cars right now) was a WRX STi. I was teaching my son how to drive it when he made an unfortunate 3rd-gear-to-2nd (while looking for 4th). It was quite an experience.
Luckily, no damage done to car or people. Just a great story for telling later.
Nitpicking: in modern car gearboxes the actual gears (cogs) are always engaged, and the grinding noise is made by parts that are sort of designed to take it.
If you grind them a lot they'll still fail, but until they do there's no degradation to the way the gears mesh and transfer power.
I cycled a lot before I learnt to drive. The concept of gears was very firmly in my head by then - all I had to do was learn to good clutch control. If a wrong gear means you are pedalling too fast or too slow, you get the idea very quickly.
I learned first on a dirt bike (13). I didn’t drive a stick until I was 19 for a delivery job but it was trial by fire at that point. I had to drive a stick to work my shift.
I drove one later, 25-32. It was fine, I don’t miss stop and go traffic with a stick shift.
> I don’t miss stop and go traffic with a stick shift.
I wanted in my heart of hearts to get a manual version of my car (a mini) but i talked myself out of it after getting stuck in a traffic jam for 2 hours in a rental.
The automatic still has paddle shifters so you can kind of drive it like a manual.
I like stop and go with manual, any time it's not a strong uphill. Somehow I find it easier to go in and out of neutral, as well as going directly to second, with the stick. I guess it technically should be possible with an automatic too, though.
I have found it useful for driving in hill country (to avoid having to ride the brakes downhill) but beyond that I'm not sure there's much practical benefit. I used to think you could downshift to buy you more time to coast to a stop without having to touch the brake and save some gas, but I think even using the brakes is enough to get a modern car to cutoff fuel flow.
I sometimes use it in town because modern automatics want to upshift very aggresively to maximize fuel economy. That means the engine is almost lugging most of the time, which isn't really good for it. So I'll use the manual mode to keep the car in a gear that results in a slightly higher engine RPM.
It's not like a real manual though, there's no tactile feedback to changing gears or knowing what gear you're in by the position of the shifter, so I don't use it all the time.
If you're getting into motorcycling, it's not a bad way to start practicing with it since the electronic override is often like most motorcycle's sequential gear shift.
I use it exclusively to downshift when I need more power, quickly. It allows me to drive in ECO mode to save gas, while avoiding sluggish downshifts by doing it manually.
As a european it is always weird to catch glimpses of the stick shift vs. automatic topic. Not because I can't imagine what it's like to not have the ability to drive stick, but because it seems like some kind of heated, ideological debate in the US, and I do not know why. It seems to me as if it is either treated as an arcane art, something to be shunned, a trait of "masculinity", or a trait of toxicity and pretentiousness.
Automatic is very much the minority here and almost everyone learns to drive on stick, even if they switch to automatic later.
While I won't deny that people like that exist here as well, not once have I encountered someone personally or in the form of a news article (in my native language) with strong opinions on the matter.
Edit: when I say "here" I mean my home country, not trying to speak for all of Europe of course
Unless my experience is very atypical, far from it being controversial, for most Americans it is a non-issue - they literally never contemplate it, any more than they wonder if there is a case for bringing back manual ignition advance.
I hate stick shifts and, born and raised and living in the eu, I have always driven automatic. The interesting comments I get ‘for not being a man’ (as an almost 2m, 100kg hairy bloke) in different countries, is always perplexing. And that’s over the past 30 years since I have been driving. Especially brits think (and say) I am a total wanker for not driving stick. But the dutch (my birth country) have similar emotions.
In the UK auto vs. stick felt like the ideological debate you mentioned.
Myself having done 10y consecutively of both, auto is a better experience overall. Except when you need that bit of immediate power from smaller engines. This is for my normal A to B driving, I don’t race.
> Automatic is very much the minority here and almost everyone learns to drive on stick, even if they switch to automatic later.
In Norway there's been discussions about phasing out teaching stick as standard - partly because of demand, partly because driving schools need to upgrade their fleets, and want to avoid the need for two sets of cars.
In Russia, you choose which one you learn and take your exam on. If you choose automatic, it's marked on your license and you can only drive automatic. But if you choose manual, you can drive either.
All car sharing cars are automatic, but other than that, it's really a matter of taste and/or budget. Some people buy manual cars because they're cheaper. Russian-made cars are almost all manual-only, and are cheaper than imported ones.
I got my license on manual, and... I just don't drive lol. Mainly because almost everywhere I go it's easier, cheaper, and sometimes faster to get there on public transit or taxi.
I have been living in the US my entire life and the extent of the debate I’ve heard here is:
- Someone makes a joke about how you should get a manual, that way nobody will steal it (because the thieves won’t know how to drive), and
- Someone makes a comment about how they visited the UK and decided to rent a car, and either they paid extra for an automatic or they saved money and drove manual.
> It seems to me as if it is either treated as an arcane art, something to be shunned, a trait of "masculinity", or a trait of toxicity and pretentiousness.
I have no idea why you sense this from American culture.
> I have no idea why you sense this from American culture.
The internet. And it applies to much more than this
You know that in your local social circle very few people have opinions about such trivial topics and you rightly see those with strong opinions as weirdos
But then you go on the internet and something in our monkey brain makes it hard to remember that comments on a thread are not a representative sample. Which is very bad because the kind of people who take the effort to comment on an internet thread are also the kind of people who have weirdly strong opinions one way or another
And because negative opinions are much more likely to be expressed than positive ones you end up basing your model of some other place (the US for europeans, europe for americans, other countries and so on) on samples which over represents the most toxic and negative opinions
Europe is wide continent. For example, in Finland most new cars sold are automatic. Hybrids and EVs make big portion of sales (even a majority) and are of course automatic, but it has been a longer trend.
For context, I'm British. Until relatively recently automatics were so rare you'd often see an actual sticker on the back of the car warning the driving style would be somewhat different (e.g. braking on downhill stretches).
The vast majority of the cars on our roads in the UK are still manual, but the tide is changing and not just with the introduction of EVs. There exists a legal quirk whereby you're not licensed to drive a manual car if you've passed your driving test in an automatic. Until that legislation is updated, I expect there to remain a strong demand for manual transmissions amongst learner and new drivers.
Personally, I'm of an age where simplicity and convenience are valued more in my life. Parallels include choosing Apple devices where I'd previously been all-in on Windows, Linux and Android; consoles over gaming PCs; and I'd also include home automation despite the initial set-up. Both our family cars are currently (non-EV for now) automatics and I can't see myself or my partner ever voluntarily going back to manual cars. I can push a single button to start, select drive and go. Even the handbrake is automatic.
Anecdotally, my social group is very much of the same mindset. Increased traffic on our small island has all but removed any romantic idealism around driving a sporty manual car on an open road. Now that driving here is more of a chore than a pleasure, anything that helps ease the burden is going to become the default.
In Iceland—until recently—there wasn’t even an option to take the driving test—nor the required driving lessons—on an automatic. You had to take it on a manual. Also most people bought a manual as their first car (as manuals were always cheaper and more available). However among my age some (wealthier) people bought automatic as their first car, and promptly forgot how to drive a manual. It is rear, but I’ve met a couple of people that simply don’t know how to drive a manual (as if they were American) even though they took the driving test and lessons on one a decade and a half ago.
EDIT: Unrelated, but there is also a common myth in Iceland that manual transmission is illegal in San Francisco. I have no idea where it comes from, but after having lived in SF and returning to Iceland I’ve had more then one people ask me about this. (I even owned a manual 4-speed VW bus [known as VW Ryebread in Iceland] while living there).
I passed my test in a manual car in Britain, but I never bought a car. I've rented them when abroad, and have an account with the pay-per-minute electric cars, but at this point I don't want to drive a manual if there's an automatic available.
FYI: almost everyone learning to drive in Norway now does so with automatic and as such get a license for automatic only. Guess the same will happen in the UK pretty quick.
In my anecdotal sample the thinking is changing indeed from "I'll learn manual just in case I ever need it" to "screw it, automatic is available everywhere, and EVs are coming".
I'm UK based and still drive a manual. The main reason being cost. I'm a super infrequent driver (maybe once a week for bulky shops or long weekend trips) and don't want to be paying through the nose for something that is a convenience not an essential. I drive a second hand 2013 Toyota aygo which was super cheap, is zero rated for road tax, incredibly reliable and ultra fuel efficient.
I'd be willing to bet I'm quite representative of other city based drivers who have the option of public transport, walking or cycling. That's why I don't see the demand for manual dropping any time soon.
Another difference I think is that with the stick, driver needs to be more prepared for moments to come on the road. Like you know that you are going to shift when you see the change in terrain ahead of you and so on. While with automatic this awareness is not required so you can expect the driver without stick to make more sudden changes. Of course not a rule.
What a load of nonsense. The manual gearbox for sports cars died around 2010-ish. Before you protest that you can still buy manual sports cars, hear me out.
The manual gearbox you can buy in any sports car today has obscenely long ratios. Partly this is common sense - almost every sports car for sale today is turbocharged, you don’t need a close ratio box. The other reason if emissions, long gone are the days of the top gear being long, with standardised emission test cycles that have prolonged driving periods at town speeds, now all gears are optimised for lower revs.
It’s not uncommon to find you only need 2nd gear for anything from 30 to 80, i.e. the speeds you’ll spend most of your time on a nice set of twisties.
Why 2010? That’s when the borg warner DSGs broke into the mainstream. No human can match their efficiency nor their shift speed. The only remaining reason in sportscars is for driver engagement. Since then the traditional slushbox auto has caught up, i have a ZF in one of my cars and it’s every bit as fast and just as smooth changing as the DSG in my last VAG.
Well their examples pointing to the utility of manual transmissions on EVs include:
- A car with a two-speed automatic transmission
- A concept with fake shifting and a fake clutch
- A modded classic car where the first two gears are admittedly not very useful
I don't think those speak well towards manual transmissions continuing to exist in the EV world, at least in the sense that enthusiasts would want them to.
I totally get the disdain for torque-converter automatic transmissions, but an EV drivetrain avoids basically all of the downsides that people have come to expect from an automatic.
This sounds like they’re making the opposite of the point they tried to make. None of those seems remotely useful.
As an EV driver I’m baffled as to why anyone would want manual. The only real advantages afaik in ICE are better torque control and engine braking, both of which don’t make any sense in an EV. Maybe in an incredibly wimpy EV
> The only real advantages afaik in ICE are better torque control and engine braking
I'd argue the majority of manual fans are into them not for any utilitarian reason, rather it's all about the enjoyment that comes from controlling a fun (i.e interesting powerband, characterful sound) engine with a satisfying shifter. Think of it like playing a musical instrument.
I highly doubt manuals will catch on for EVs because the electric motors are super smooth and their torque makes gears irrelevant (the Porsche Taycan being an outlier here).
Then I make my kiddos prove that it's 3. That's the place where understanding comes in: understanding that algebra is operations on the equation as a whole, and not just divining the correct answer.
I love driving stick and I've done so with all my cars...but I'm okay seeing it go. I'd prefer the options to be more environmental, and there are other joys in life. It's not good to be attached to such things.
I recently switched from 10 years of driving stick/standard to an EV and the sensation of instant power dwarfs the fun of selecting gear for me. I might just still be in the honeymoon phase, and I barely drive preferring to bike around everywhere instead. But having ample power in every situation from highway acceleration to hill roads pretty much obsoletes everything I used the stick for. I guess I do miss the habit of clutching and heel-toeing but with an EV I get all the benefits with none of the fiddliness. This was not the case when driving anything but the top automatics.
I've had an EV since 2016, and I'm a huge manual fan, but the things I like about manual are almost without exception already there in an EV. What really grinds my gears, so to speak, with an auto trans is being in the wrong gear for what's coming up, say when waiting for an opening to overtake.
As you say, the EV has smooth, instant power available all the time, and good "engine breaking". The only thing it's missing is the nostalgia of winding through the gears and the symphony of the engine, exhaust, and drivetrain. But the smooth, powerful acceleration, is there in the EV.
Driving ICE manual is the whole package. Engine sound, the manual interaction, the little jerk when you miss the rev on shift, feeling of all the mechanics when changing the gear, feeling the vibrations thru the chassis when you accelerate, engine going braaaaAAAAAP and screaming like angry bees when going past VTEC threshold etc.
And the little details like how the notch on the first gear in my Civic ('07 Type-R) becomes lighter when the gearbox oil heats up and the whole rest of smaller idiosyncrasies of mechanical system.
For me the fun is man understanding and controlling machine, it is gone the moment machine pretends it's something it isn't. Not saying electric wouldn't be fun, just that I hope it will be its own type of fun instead of fake.
My car is a bit raw tho, spins to 8.6k RPM and have pretty hard suspension. Typical ICE car isn't exactly that "talkative" and is much more mushier around the edges.
But it is a bit funny to me that if you want high revving NA engine your options are 15+ years old Hondas or top of the line Porsche...
I’ve driven stick lots of my life and no it doesn’t. You press the pedal on electric and the smooth instant and seemingly endless application of power is one of the absolute best parts of it.
It's definitely going. When I learnt to drive in the UK 15 years ago automatic cars were completely non existent (if you pass your driving test in an automatic in the UK you are only allowed to drive automatics - so everyone does manual, which allows you to drive both).
Fast forward 15 years and I'm surprised when I see a stick shift car - primarily (very) old taxis/ubers.
Seems like a nicely balanced perspective. I don't drive much, but when I do, I much prefer 'manual' (translation of 'stick' to non-US English), and take pleasure in smooth heel-and-toe changes. I'm mostly a motorcyclist and similarly enjoy getting better at smooth braking with changing down and rev-matching.
But if electric motorbikes become usable and affordable to me within my lifetime, they will offer different pleasures (ubiquitous torque, quiet). And outside of driving/riding, there will be enough pleasures to experience and skills to learn for many lifetimes.
I feel just the same, with the proviso that I want a mechanical backup for catastrophic software bugs - a fully mechanical drive disengagement, aka shift to neutral. And the emergency, aka parking, brake should have no software mediation either, beyond sensors that signal software to "do the right thing" (park or neutral) with the drive. I haven't started looking at EVs, but one will probably be my next car when my current (stick) irreparably fails.
I've accepted they have to go, and haven't had a manual daily driver in about ten years now. So I don't feel the need to have a manual option when I inevitably switch to an EV. But I also have a few classic cars that I can take out whenever I've got the itch. I suspect I'll keep a manual 'toy' car around until I'm too old to drive it.
I haven't driven stick in years, having bought a DSG car, but I still prefer 'driving one-handed' the way you do with a stick shift, and it's clear at this point that some people don't remember being passengers in a manual transmission vehicle, let alone driving them.
Shifting an EV seems like a gimmick, with not much of a gain, and no substantial consequence for poor technique. A real reason, posted earlier today, is people strongly preferring that experience of manually controlling a complex mechanism, and being unwilling to give it up. I sure won't.
EV Sales Sticking Point: People Still Want Manual Transmissions (hackaday.com)
A manual EV can make sense. A normal stick is just a torque modifier. If we have a "stick" that limits torque of an EV, with this we can limit the way torque is delivered in each gear, with this the experience of such drive can be similar.
If you want to artificially limit torque, sure. But it generally isn't necessary.
The only attempts at production EVs with multiple gears have targeted two gears, one for acceleration and one for increase top speed above 100mph for racing or Autobahn cruising.
That's not going to give drivers the "thrill" of a manual transmission.
If what you are seeking is the direct-drive feel of a manual transmission, and shifting to be in the strong part of the power curve for each situation, an EV does all of that just by pressing the accelerator.
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The biggest magic tricks to teaching were (1) teaching him to think about gear changes before actually doing them, and (2) being relaxed about mistakes.
For (1) I would drive, and have him tell me when to shift. This gets over the intellectual hurdle of coordinating engine speed with road speed.
For (2), I just said, "OK, you're going to stall the car, and you're going to grind the gears. Everybody does. It's no big deal. Here, watch, I'll do it." Then I'd stall & grind the gears, show him to get out of the grinding, and laugh about it. I think anxiety is the biggest problem.
I'm sure if it's your own son or daughter, it gets more complicated :)
In first gear, I have them release it slowly until the car starts going, then have them push it in until the car rolls to a stop. Take breaks, explain what the clutch is doing. Repeat until they start getting bored.
Then introduce the brake pedal. Tada! You can stop more quickly now.
Finally, the gas pedal. You can push it until the engine shrieks in protest! If only there were a way to get it to quiet down but still keep your speed....
Of course, you need a very large, very flat surface for this method to work. But I've had a lot more success since starting to do it this way.
After an hour or so, he had mastered the engaging the clutch and I began to add the next steps. A couple sessions and he had the whole thing down.
Eventually I taught him how to double-clutch, rev-match when downshifting, and even how to float the shift with no clutch at all.
Today he owns a manual trans performance car (Z06) and has a great fondness for manuals.
I still had a horrible first drive from the dealer to the house, probably stalled 20 times (lots of small hills in Daly City, near SF) and annoyed some drivers behind me, but it worked out in the end.
Watching the tach is pretty unintuitive for someone who's never driven one, too.
I’d saved up for a while when I was 20ish, and I wanted a NEW car. Only thing I could get a loan for was the cheapest offering - a stripped manual Honda Fit. I fell in love with it and ordered one from Japan (they didn’t have a fully stripped version for sale in my town, so it was a “special” order).
Long story short, I learned to drive stick for the first time when I picked it up from the lot with zero miles and had to drive it home, and then to work the next day… that first commute was UGLY. But I more or less had the hang of it by the time I got home that night. I still drive that car daily almost two decades later - and I absolutely still love it. It’s never needed one thing beyond regular maintenance in all those 150k miles. They literally don’t make ‘um like that any more.
I'm currently rocking a 20 year old Nissan Micra "Twister" with an auto gearbox - a proper granddad car (I am as it turns out). It weighs about two kilos and has about 2 BHP but it is a bit of a Q ship. I've seen off some expensive cars at roundabouts with some local knowledge a careful choice of lane and a stomp on power when it counts. It does make some odd noises when turning right (a CV boot is quite fucked). Lane one on a roundabout is often quicker than lane two due to less curvature, unless you can transition from lane two to one to straighten it out.
An auto always has some drive engaged so a standing start is often quicker but in a manual you can stomp on the accelerator and run up say 4000 RPM and give your clutch a good old work out whilst using the brake to hold in place. If you have enough power, you can start off in second or ideally you have one of those flappy paddle jobs and stay in first for about a half second and then change up as you go.
I prefer a manual box - you feel more engaged with the vehicle but then an auto can also be played with too. You can make it change up and down when you get the hang of it by blipping the throttle and getting to know what it wants to do in certain circumstances.
IMO, the best part of a manual performance car is chirping tires (or fully breaking them loose!) on a 2nd to 3rd shift in a turbo car with no-lift-shift.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heel-and-toe_shifting
I lived on a country road and learned when I was 12 by stealing my mother's car (a Fiat 500) before she got home from work. Two or three goes and I was away. Admittedly concentrating on the clutch I did forget to steer and went off-road a couple of times.
Never did anything as exciting as you but I do feel like maybe being a passenger for so many years gives you an ear for when a gear change is needed, and you hear "sorry, wrong gear" and feel the lack of acceleration or whatever. As for /why/, I just imagined cycling up a hill.
Don't teach family members stick shift. Save yourself the headache, and point them to driving school.
You just have to feel the car pushing foward while the parking brake is still engaged and just release the parking brake while the car starts moving forward.
The best was snow!
Tip for parents who are teaching snow driving in a front wheel drive vehicle: get the car moving and set the emergency brake. The rear tires will lock and the rear end will be all over the place. Pick a wide road with a forgiving shoulder.
They will have to counter steer and keep the front of the car under control. Later, trigger a slide with that brake (assuming your car has one you can use that way) and watch them handle it like a champ!
We had a good time frankly. Drove an older, manual car. Minor damage was not a big deal. Made the whole experience nice, reasonably relaxed, fun.
My last stick car (I'm between cars right now) was a WRX STi. I was teaching my son how to drive it when he made an unfortunate 3rd-gear-to-2nd (while looking for 4th). It was quite an experience.
Luckily, no damage done to car or people. Just a great story for telling later.
If you grind them a lot they'll still fail, but until they do there's no degradation to the way the gears mesh and transfer power.
I drove one later, 25-32. It was fine, I don’t miss stop and go traffic with a stick shift.
I wanted in my heart of hearts to get a manual version of my car (a mini) but i talked myself out of it after getting stuck in a traffic jam for 2 hours in a rental.
The automatic still has paddle shifters so you can kind of drive it like a manual.
It's not like a real manual though, there's no tactile feedback to changing gears or knowing what gear you're in by the position of the shifter, so I don't use it all the time.
Automatic is very much the minority here and almost everyone learns to drive on stick, even if they switch to automatic later.
While I won't deny that people like that exist here as well, not once have I encountered someone personally or in the form of a news article (in my native language) with strong opinions on the matter.
Edit: when I say "here" I mean my home country, not trying to speak for all of Europe of course
Myself having done 10y consecutively of both, auto is a better experience overall. Except when you need that bit of immediate power from smaller engines. This is for my normal A to B driving, I don’t race.
In Norway there's been discussions about phasing out teaching stick as standard - partly because of demand, partly because driving schools need to upgrade their fleets, and want to avoid the need for two sets of cars.
All car sharing cars are automatic, but other than that, it's really a matter of taste and/or budget. Some people buy manual cars because they're cheaper. Russian-made cars are almost all manual-only, and are cheaper than imported ones.
I got my license on manual, and... I just don't drive lol. Mainly because almost everywhere I go it's easier, cheaper, and sometimes faster to get there on public transit or taxi.
- Someone makes a joke about how you should get a manual, that way nobody will steal it (because the thieves won’t know how to drive), and
- Someone makes a comment about how they visited the UK and decided to rent a car, and either they paid extra for an automatic or they saved money and drove manual.
> It seems to me as if it is either treated as an arcane art, something to be shunned, a trait of "masculinity", or a trait of toxicity and pretentiousness.
I have no idea why you sense this from American culture.
The internet. And it applies to much more than this
You know that in your local social circle very few people have opinions about such trivial topics and you rightly see those with strong opinions as weirdos
But then you go on the internet and something in our monkey brain makes it hard to remember that comments on a thread are not a representative sample. Which is very bad because the kind of people who take the effort to comment on an internet thread are also the kind of people who have weirdly strong opinions one way or another
And because negative opinions are much more likely to be expressed than positive ones you end up basing your model of some other place (the US for europeans, europe for americans, other countries and so on) on samples which over represents the most toxic and negative opinions
These days they are harder to find, and that means you have to pay the "automatic tax" on many models. So I would be frustrated to lose the option.
Our current car, a Volkswagen GTI, still has a stick, but it does seem like it could be our last. Even some valets do not know how to park the thing!
The vast majority of the cars on our roads in the UK are still manual, but the tide is changing and not just with the introduction of EVs. There exists a legal quirk whereby you're not licensed to drive a manual car if you've passed your driving test in an automatic. Until that legislation is updated, I expect there to remain a strong demand for manual transmissions amongst learner and new drivers.
Personally, I'm of an age where simplicity and convenience are valued more in my life. Parallels include choosing Apple devices where I'd previously been all-in on Windows, Linux and Android; consoles over gaming PCs; and I'd also include home automation despite the initial set-up. Both our family cars are currently (non-EV for now) automatics and I can't see myself or my partner ever voluntarily going back to manual cars. I can push a single button to start, select drive and go. Even the handbrake is automatic.
Anecdotally, my social group is very much of the same mindset. Increased traffic on our small island has all but removed any romantic idealism around driving a sporty manual car on an open road. Now that driving here is more of a chore than a pleasure, anything that helps ease the burden is going to become the default.
EDIT: Unrelated, but there is also a common myth in Iceland that manual transmission is illegal in San Francisco. I have no idea where it comes from, but after having lived in SF and returning to Iceland I’ve had more then one people ask me about this. (I even owned a manual 4-speed VW bus [known as VW Ryebread in Iceland] while living there).
I passed my test in a manual car in Britain, but I never bought a car. I've rented them when abroad, and have an account with the pay-per-minute electric cars, but at this point I don't want to drive a manual if there's an automatic available.
How recent do you mean? I know you get manufacturer brands like "5.1 GTI Automatic" on the back, but I can't remember ever seeing a warning sticker.
> Currently, manual cars still account for 70 per cent of the 31.7 million cars on UK's roads [1]
so it must have been a fair while ago.
[1] https://www.directlinegroup.co.uk/en/news/brand-news/2022/th...
I'd be willing to bet I'm quite representative of other city based drivers who have the option of public transport, walking or cycling. That's why I don't see the demand for manual dropping any time soon.
Another difference I think is that with the stick, driver needs to be more prepared for moments to come on the road. Like you know that you are going to shift when you see the change in terrain ahead of you and so on. While with automatic this awareness is not required so you can expect the driver without stick to make more sudden changes. Of course not a rule.
The manual gearbox you can buy in any sports car today has obscenely long ratios. Partly this is common sense - almost every sports car for sale today is turbocharged, you don’t need a close ratio box. The other reason if emissions, long gone are the days of the top gear being long, with standardised emission test cycles that have prolonged driving periods at town speeds, now all gears are optimised for lower revs.
It’s not uncommon to find you only need 2nd gear for anything from 30 to 80, i.e. the speeds you’ll spend most of your time on a nice set of twisties.
Why 2010? That’s when the borg warner DSGs broke into the mainstream. No human can match their efficiency nor their shift speed. The only remaining reason in sportscars is for driver engagement. Since then the traditional slushbox auto has caught up, i have a ZF in one of my cars and it’s every bit as fast and just as smooth changing as the DSG in my last VAG.
- A car with a two-speed automatic transmission
- A concept with fake shifting and a fake clutch
- A modded classic car where the first two gears are admittedly not very useful
I don't think those speak well towards manual transmissions continuing to exist in the EV world, at least in the sense that enthusiasts would want them to.
I totally get the disdain for torque-converter automatic transmissions, but an EV drivetrain avoids basically all of the downsides that people have come to expect from an automatic.
As an EV driver I’m baffled as to why anyone would want manual. The only real advantages afaik in ICE are better torque control and engine braking, both of which don’t make any sense in an EV. Maybe in an incredibly wimpy EV
I'd argue the majority of manual fans are into them not for any utilitarian reason, rather it's all about the enjoyment that comes from controlling a fun (i.e interesting powerband, characterful sound) engine with a satisfying shifter. Think of it like playing a musical instrument.
I highly doubt manuals will catch on for EVs because the electric motors are super smooth and their torque makes gears irrelevant (the Porsche Taycan being an outlier here).
For example, a friend of mine taught remedial algebra at the U of W. She'd write on the board:
and ask the students what the value of "x" was. They all fell over into a quivering heap of jelly at the word "x". Then she'd write: and ask them to "fill in the blank". They all instantly said "3".As you say, the EV has smooth, instant power available all the time, and good "engine breaking". The only thing it's missing is the nostalgia of winding through the gears and the symphony of the engine, exhaust, and drivetrain. But the smooth, powerful acceleration, is there in the EV.
Driving ICE manual is the whole package. Engine sound, the manual interaction, the little jerk when you miss the rev on shift, feeling of all the mechanics when changing the gear, feeling the vibrations thru the chassis when you accelerate, engine going braaaaAAAAAP and screaming like angry bees when going past VTEC threshold etc.
And the little details like how the notch on the first gear in my Civic ('07 Type-R) becomes lighter when the gearbox oil heats up and the whole rest of smaller idiosyncrasies of mechanical system.
For me the fun is man understanding and controlling machine, it is gone the moment machine pretends it's something it isn't. Not saying electric wouldn't be fun, just that I hope it will be its own type of fun instead of fake.
My car is a bit raw tho, spins to 8.6k RPM and have pretty hard suspension. Typical ICE car isn't exactly that "talkative" and is much more mushier around the edges.
But it is a bit funny to me that if you want high revving NA engine your options are 15+ years old Hondas or top of the line Porsche...
If you want to feel "connected" to a modern car you are out of luck. It won't happen. Adding fakeness to compensate is ultimately unsatisfying.
I can absolutely tell you that. It sounds stupid and burdensome.
And in terms of effectiveness, it's basically homeopathy, or healing candles.
Fast forward 15 years and I'm surprised when I see a stick shift car - primarily (very) old taxis/ubers.
But if electric motorbikes become usable and affordable to me within my lifetime, they will offer different pleasures (ubiquitous torque, quiet). And outside of driving/riding, there will be enough pleasures to experience and skills to learn for many lifetimes.
EV Sales Sticking Point: People Still Want Manual Transmissions (hackaday.com)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33661154
The only attempts at production EVs with multiple gears have targeted two gears, one for acceleration and one for increase top speed above 100mph for racing or Autobahn cruising.
That's not going to give drivers the "thrill" of a manual transmission.
If what you are seeking is the direct-drive feel of a manual transmission, and shifting to be in the strong part of the power curve for each situation, an EV does all of that just by pressing the accelerator.
Similarly I'd rather drive car with a shitty capacitive steering wheel buttons (gosh they suck so bad) over car without keyless entry...