Adventures in Stick-Shift Driving

[Mrs. Funk]

I have never been a successful driver of manual transmission cars. Mpfunk's car is a manual transmission, so its sporty two-door zippiness has been unavailable to me up to this point.

Mr. Funk took me to a nearby church parking lot (where most kids learn at the age of 15 to drive a manual transmission) for adventures in stick-shift driving. I successfully managed to kill the car about 8 times in the first spin around the parking lot. I rolled backwards down an "incline" until I was afraid the car was going to gently roll back into the street.

I drove halfway home and at the first time of trouble (GASP! an intersection!) I got frustrated and basically threw a temper tantrum in the car and refused to finish the drive.

Seriously, am I FIVE?

[Surfah]

Originally Posted by Mrs. Funk

I have never been a successful driver of manual transmission cars. Mpfunk's car is a manual transmission, so its sporty two-door zippiness has been unavailable to me up to this point.

Mr. Funk took me to a nearby church parking lot (where most kids learn at the age of 15 to drive a manual transmission) for adventures in stick-shift driving. I successfully managed to kill the car about 8 times in the first spin around the parking lot. I rolled backwards down an "incline" until I was afraid the car was going to gently roll back into the street.

I drove halfway home and at the first time of trouble (GASP! an intersection!) I got frustrated and basically threw a temper tantrum in the car and refused to finish the drive.

Seriously, am I FIVE?

Gidget and I gave our little Toyota to my youngest sister who just moved here to Utah. It's a stick and I took her to the church parking lot last Sunday and we practiced. She did surprisingly well and even drove home. However, when she tried to drive back to her apartment later that evening she killed the car 9 times in about 50 yards, got upset, and I drove her home. Though the next day she drove all by herself and has been driving around town now by her lonesome for a few days now.

[TripletDaddy]

My brother took me to a parking lot to teach me to drive a stick shift. My mom made him do it, so he was kind of pissed about it.

I kept telling him that it was hard to do the clutch and gas at the same time. I was used to seeing everyone do it pretty quickly and every time I tried to imitate it, I stalled. So I was nervous about stalling the car.

He gave me the best advice ever for learning to drive a stick...

"You can either look like a complete and total a**hole and stall your car in front of everyone, or you can look like a partial a**hole and rev your engine high while you slowly let out your clutch."

After that, I had zero problems. Basically, I just revved and let out the clutch slowly to avoid stalling. I also avoided hilly areas at first. After about an hour or so of driving around, you get the feel and learn to let your clutch out faster and no rev so high.

I modified by brother's advice and taught my wife and little brother-in-law to drive a stick the same way.

[minn_stat]

Sorry to thread-jack here, but I've always preferred manual transmissions to automatic. Let's see...
You pay more for an automatic.
Automatics have more costly repairs.
You get worse gas mileage with an automatic.

[MikeWaters]

but autos have higher resale value. manuals are hard to sell.

[Surfah]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

but autos have higher resale value. manuals are hard to sell.

Very true. In fact each year manufacturers are making less and less manuals every year and most now offer some type of manumatic, tiptronic, whatever you want to call it, automatic. Also, not all manuals get better gas mileage than automatics. In fact some automatic transmissions project better gas mileage than their manual transmission counterparts. And even if you get better gas mileage with the manual it's often marginal and not worth the savings over an automatic.

It's amazing to me how many people nowadays do not know how to drive manuals though. I was taught how to drive one when I was 15. And 3 of the 5 cars I have owned in my lifetime were all stick shift.

[minn_stat]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

but autos have higher resale value. manuals are hard to sell.

True enough, but only if you sell them. I've had three cars in my life, and the first two (both manuals) were driven until they literally couldn't be driven anymore, so there wasn't really anything to sell. My current manual 1995 Honda Civic has 216000 miles on it, but I'm not ready to part with it anytime soon.

My wife's cars, that's a different story...