I found it interesting, and thought we might want to share it with beginning drivers. Most of us either already drive a stick, or have no desire to learn, like my older sister.
I see that it was apparently first posted by Edmunds in 2006, but most of the advice it still valid. One thing they left out is any discussion about sitting at stop lights in neutral with your foot off of the clutch. I always do. I guess that comes under the heading of keeping the “red light” off as much as possible.
My daughter protested a while when she first saw her graduation vehicle. At first her eyes lit up seeing the newly painted, used motor pool, Ford Ranger…till she got inside !
“Dad…:(( it’s a stick ! I don’t know stick .”
“But you’ll learn, it’s easy.” I said matter of factly with a quick shrug of the shoulders. Which is in fact exactly what I thought when choosing to buy it. I thought nothing of it being manual because…she’d simply learn then.
My dad took her under his wing and she was soon tooling all over town without a second thought. And , yes, she couldn’t let her buddies borrow her truck ( side benefit ) because they didn’t know stick !
The irony here ?
Later on she rolled it on black ice comming home from college in Silver City and couldn’t quickly afford a replacement . So I picked up a quick 500 dollar Taurus to get her through.
– looking inside she was one again dejected.
Why ??
Because it WASN’T a standard !
Turns out she loved the stick. When she married, her husband had a manual Miata. He thought she’d never drive it leaving it to be his alone…HA !! To his surprize, he couldn’t get her OUT of it.
When they started a famlily they had both a manual Civic hybrid and Jeep CJ7.
Only now that they replaced the Jeep did she finally end up with another automatic.
I’ve laughingly read news pieces where a potential car thief is completely flumoxed that the car they want to steal is a manual trans…so they abandon the attempt ! ;))
With so many college graduates unable to find jobs, I am proposing that universities offer courses in automobile theft. One of the courses would involve manual transmission theory with a lab to go along with it. This would be useful to those going into bank heisting in selecting the appropriate get-away car. At least students wouldn’t embarrass themselves by trying to steal a manual transmission car they couldn’t drive.