Attitudes about Stick Shifts

So I was at a dealer the other day and saw two kids wandering around the lot. One basically looks inside a Miata and says its sorta cool but has old people stuff in it. He was referring to the manual transmission. Evidently manuals are very uncool by the younger generation. Turns out they view them about the same way we would a manual crank car (I asked a few other teenage family members and they all agreed). It's official, I'm old with old people "stuff."

"Old stuff" has never left me stranded. I point that out to every person that gets Shang-hai'd by a new contraption, whether it's car or electronic device.

The cool part is my wife gets it now!

Comparatively, my two year old thinks the standard transmission in my cars (shut up I'm old) make them better than Moms car.

I'm positive it is in no way related with her yelling "LAUNCH CAR" at toll booths though.

DD#1 is planning on getting a manual when she replaces her ATX Impreza in a couple years. And I think I'm about to pull the trigger on a manual car for DD#2 as well. She didn't have a problem with it when I showed her how much newer a car she could get for the same price with a stick... and longer service life, too.

I think The0retical has the right idea. A lot of it comes down to how it was taught to them. The average parent these days also finds manual transmissions to be old fashioned, thus that's what their kids have learned from them as well.

Not all is lost. We just pulled the trigger on a replacement for the Jetta TDI wagon my 16 year old daughter has been driving. That replacement is a 4 door GTI with a 6 speed. She went from being terrified of driving my manual transmission cars to loving them. So much so that she asked if we could get a manual transmission in the replacement car!

We picked up the car last week (while she was out of town) and she has driven it to school this week, on her own. She LOVES the car and I'm thrilled!

In reply to The0retical:

Your daughter will grow up to be an awesome person some day. And she will embarrass and emasculate her boyfriends every time.

Get off my berkeleying lawn.

Off to push the third pedal...

I'm teaching my kids right. My boys (ages 12 and 9) are just starting to explore racing simulators. Just got them a Logitech G27 wheel. They're begging me to teach them how to drive the car as a manual.

I don't see an automatic transmission as an upgrade or an evolution (improvement) over a manual.

I don't see a manual transmission as an old version of a "modern" automatic transmission.

Analogy Alert: a disc brake (or is it disk break?) is an improvement over drum brake. An evolution in the truest sense.

Bottom line: a manual is NOT old fashioned. It IS the most precise method of connecting the driver to the engine.

Manual transmissions are fun, BUT they do have their downsides and aren't required to have fun (and don't always help).

There are times when I wish my new Focus RS had been available with a dual-clutch option.

Sorry, but its 2017 and even most professional race cars have moved away from truly manual gearboxes. They are slower to shift and there are emissions and efficiency issues with them.

That said, modern kids are just as ignorant and silly as previous generations, just in their own way. The difference now is that they share this ignorance and sillyness with more people at a faster rate.

21 year old here. Wouldn't "old person stuff" be the chrome column shifter hooked to the 727 in my truck? It has chrome manual window cranks too.

My two oldest kids have both driven a stick shift, in a parking lot. Ages 8 and 7 now, though they both succeeded a while ago at 7 and 6.

They think it's the greatest.

To be clear I am not abandoning my manual, just thought it was funny how they are perceived with teenagers now. When I was a teenager we all wanted manuals.

get off my lawn!!

It's a natural evolution though. Kids dream of race cars and sports cars and access them via video games and forums and reviews. Everything is #'s and Nurburgring times and exotics pushing the envelope. Race cars have moved on. PDK and DCT's and whatever acronym are fit to the fastest cars on the planet where tenths of seconds matter.

The manual transmission is becoming a bit of a gentleman's relic. A choice for driver engagement that is not based on greater efficiency or the fastest laptime, but about the experience. Like a high end manual watch that actually keeps time less accurately than it's modern mass produced competition.

...and you can pry it from my cold dead hands.

I drove my kids to school the other day in the challenge pickup. They both loved moving the shifter for me. I even had them calling out which gear they were moving it to...

Trackmouse wrote: In reply to The0retical: Your daughter will grow up to be an awesome person some day. And she will embarrass and emasculate her boyfriends every time.

This is truth. My daughter was teaching her boyfriend how to drive a properly equipped automobile a couple months back.

Stefan wrote: The difference now is that they share this ignorance and sillyness with more people at a faster rate.

So you're saying stupidity spreads faster than intelligence can stamp it out?

I heard a story on NPR (I know, what do I expect) from the Detroit Auto Show. They said the hottest thing at this year's show is self driving/autonomous cars.

They went on to describe in detail the various levels of autonomy from cars like the Tesla that can self-drive but still requires a driver at the wheel to those that don't even have human controls or a driver's seat as we know it. The engineer being interviewed called the latter (i.e. no human involvement) "what everybody wants."

If there are folks out there who dream of a car with no steering wheel or even a brake pedal, how can you expect those same people to want to have to use a 3rd pedal and a lever every time they drive?

Stefan wrote: There are times when I wish my new Focus RS had been available with a dual-clutch option. Sorry, but its 2017 and even most professional race cars have moved away from truly manual gearboxes. They are slower to shift and there are emissions and efficiency issues with them.

For me, that's the key. Does the clutchless transmission in a Ferrari or Porsche perform better than a human could? Absolutely. I'd argue that as you go down in the price of cars, however, the automatics have less features and are not as efficient. Once the tech that goes into a Ferrari comes to the "normal" car, then I could easily see the manual going away (and makes sense to do so), but we're not quite there yet.

-Rob

My truck is virtually theft proof.

3 speed standard transmission with column shift.

Now you damn kids get off of my lawn and take your fancy floor shift standard transmissions with you.

I had to cross compile and link a C++ app on Linux for Solaris yesterday because I'm the only one left who still remembers how.

I wear a watch that makes a ticking sound.

The hair on my chin is white.

My '17 truck has a manual transmission.

Like I said, for those of us on a budget, a manual is the only way to be truly connected to the engine.

Imagine sprinting across a field barefoot vs wearing spongy platform shoes.

Trackmouse wrote: In reply to The0retical: Your daughter will grow up to be an awesome person some day. And she will embarrass and emasculate her boyfriends every time.

I dont think driving a manual or knowing how makes you more awesome or less. Nor do I think its more manly to drive them. My preference in manual vs automatic is the car. Besides that, I'm completly indifferent to how I'm perceived by driving either. I think that considering people who drive manuals to be better in any shape or form than someone who cant is silly though. If my son had a gf that could drive a manual and he couldnt my reaction would be, "oh okay".

In reply to yupididit:

I agree. In general I approve of people with wider skillsets than narrower ones. But there is nothing specifically magic about being able to drive a manual or not.

I'd favor somebody who knows how to split firewood or hem pants or [insert random physical skill here] rather than somebody who can't do those things. But only in the sense that they have more knowledge.