As someone that literally spent 25 years driving a manual, including various stints in racing. Manuals have seen their day.
It used to be if you wanted better mileage, you drove a manual. If you wanted to be faster on the track, drive a manual (caveat there is drag racing.)
Today? The computer is just better at controlling a transmission. I drive a Camry Hybrid now and not having shifts is REALLY weird and the drone getting up to highway speeds is annoying, but I do like the 45mpg. Not to mention, when I sat down to learn how the Toyota Hybrid Drive works… It’s a pretty clever system.
There are a lot of times that nostalgia gets the better of me and I wish I had a car with a manual. My oldest is possibly joining a skating team that is a 2 hour drive away. It’s tempting to let him use my car and then buy an older manual for myself as a toy. I’d love to get a hold of another mid-80’s Corolla GT-S. I autocrossed one back in the late 80’s early 90’s. It still remains my favorite car I’ve ever owned.
Same here . Obviously it does feel more like actually driving a car instead of a toy but to be honest, electric is here and they don’t shift. Today when i feel like doing some driving for the sake of driving- a motorcycle is much more fun anyway.
This but unironically.
Funnily enough, I have a few friends who really think like this. Personally, having driven manual for 20 years before I switched to electric a year ago, I don’t see it, apart from a certain comfortable nostalgia. Automatic is better in cities and it’s a lot easier for kids to learn. Handbrake starts on hills? What a weird thing to be nostalgic about.
I suspect it’s just these people think handling the gearstick makes them special. It’s the one thing they can be smug about,completely discounting the fact that any old idiot can learn to drive manual if they just practice a bit. Reminds me of my grandpa who insisted that it’s better to chop down trees with an axe and a handsaw, instead of using these modern chainsaws. He was a stubborn old dude.
Good insight, it really is basically “if you get rid of this, then I won’t be good at anything”
PUT IT IN “H”
What country is this car from?
She’ll go 300 hectares on a single tank of kerosene.
During Covid, I put together a budget sim rig. Played a looooot of VR Assetto Corsa. Learned to drive a manual, then went and did a manual Porsche race car on a track in Vegas. It worked! It was one of the best things I’ve ever done. I was flushed when I got out of the car. It was overwhelming.
Anyway, I was ready. So I took the natural next step. I bought a manual 1984 Ford F-250 with a ~7L (7.4L?) engine, dual gas tanks that held more fuel than I could ever afford. It was a beast. Long story short, I was not ready. Oh, did I mention I lived in mountainous Utah at the base of said mountains at the time?
Yeah pre year ~2000 cars are a bit different lmao
We should also get rid of starter motors. Who needs them? We can just hand crank the car to start it, like real men did back in the day.
I love when it backfires and accidentally breaks your arm! So manly!!!
This is a tip for people that don’t drive automatic transmission, if you ever try it, put it in R and really floor it. The R stands for racing mode!
I hate the knob. I can’t decide if that or the Nissan “orb of motion” as Garbage Time put it is my least favourite. I miss my manual car, but I’m on the electric train now, as computery as it gets.
Ours has a stick configuration. Fellow Frank supporter
my uncle learned driving with a manual and he said it scared the shit out of him because anytime he went up a hill hed start going backwards trying to get to the next gear 😭
I bought a new 2024 vehicle last year with a manual transmission. This will be the last manual I ever own. I don’t expect them to be around by the next time I get a car.
I’ve enjoyed driving stick since I was a teenager. It still makes my commute more enjoyable. A good rev matched downshift still makes me smile. I’m going to miss the experience when it finally comes to an end, but hopefully I can keep it up another 20 years.
All hail the Unimog!
Biblically accurate transmission
“How many hydraulic levers you need?”
“All of them”
“How many hydraulic-driven pieces of equipment does your rig have?”
“Mind your own business”
you aren’t supposed to show people what the control panel to the mcflurry machine looks like
As a classically trained driver I’ve found automatics make people drive worse because they have to think less. And they already barely think.
Stupid is as stupid does. A significant portion of trucking accidents involve the truck driver missing a cue because they were mid gear change.
While it is good to have a person learn to drive stick, it is really hard to get people to learn how to drive if they have zero interest in actually learning how to be a driver, no matter what transmission.
I personally like dual clutch transmissions and daily’ed a car to 175k miles with one, yet I went out of my way to find a manual version of my current car.
Manual occupies their phone hand. How is someone supposed to heart content so the algorithm gives them more of it!
Using the PRiNDle opens one up for so many activities.
using the PRiNDle
What the fuck is a “classically trained driver”?
He was taught by the same institute that taught Beethoven to drift.
Grand staff drifting
Wow, was that playable?
To Beethoven and no one else probably
Didn’t go to one of those lousy postmodern driving schools I think
Like Robert Wells or Bill Nye.
like going to a prestigious school for drivers? julihart for driving?
Mom took him to a big office building parking lot on a Sunday when it was quiet. At least that’s how this classically trained driver learned.
I’ve actually observed the opposite. Automatics leave more brain cells to focus on traffic.
“Self driving” cars on the other hand…
They use them to focus on their phones, not the road
That’s just a type of driver though. They come in all transmissions.
Now think about how much worse they would drive if they had to switch their concentration from the road to the transmission.
Do you sing an aria by Mozart or something when you drive? But anyway, in my experience driving manual makes people more distracted because they have to think about gears and the clutch and stuff. Sure, a competent driver will not have any difficulty with that, but there’s an awful lot of them out there that don’t quite fall into that category.
You must not know how to drive a manual. When you know how to drive one, you don’t think about it. You just do it. You feel connected to the car and connected to the act of driving. Automatics absolutely allow people to go on autopilot and they focus on anything but driving: stuffing their face with food, browsing lemmy, texting, talking on their phone on speaker while holding it up to their mouth for some fucking reason even though it would be easier and better sound quality to just hold it up to their ear like phones were designed to be used, or you know, just use the fucking hands free phone calling that’s built into every fucking car that was made in the last decade and a half and included in every cheap ass aftermarket stereo system available on the planet
I’ve driven manual for over 30 years. Back in the day automatic transmissions were slow, clunky and inefficient. When I first tried modern one, I was instantly converted. Like, I also don’t want to manually adjust rotation speed on my washing machine, why would I do it in the car? Driving electric takes it to a whole new level. It just frees up mind share for concentrating on traffic. There’s no guarantee people will actually do that, of course. And if you think that things that are subconscious don’t take up mind share, you don’t know much about how the brain works. And if you think drivers on manual are less distracted, I have news for you too. I guess you live in the US, where driving manual is a choice. Here it’s mainly in cheaper, older cars which are driven by people who don’t much care about cars or driving.
You’re wrong
No I let my exhaust do the singing. It’s like playing a really simple pipe organ.
Only just noticed Your username. For a moment I thought You were serious.
If I was serious I’d say no human is sane enough to drive.
I mean, I’ve driven only automatics my whole life, with the odd exception of a friend’s ATV or whatnot, but I know when and how to use an e brake (and/or dual foot the brake pedal and gas pedal) to start a car on an incline, when said car has an automatic transmission…
EDIT: Also, most automatics will let you attempt a rolling start in neutral… I’ve done this many times, either rolling downhill or having people push.
You’re not gonna uninvent automatic transmissions.
Assuming you’re American (I doubt a non American would name themselves ‘Boomer Humor’), what you could do is mandate people completely retest, written and driving tests, for their liscenses every 5 years, then every 2 years after some age cutoff (60? 65?) then every single year after another age cutoff (70? 75?)… instead of just assuming that because they passed the test once in their life, all their skills and knowledge are perfect and up to date for the rest of their lives.
Most people think they are much better drivers than they actually are, so lets actually reality check them on that.
I would be so happy if we had stringent driving tests like in Europe. Hell, I’d gladly be re-tested every year if it meant people knew which lane to use and what turn signals were for.
Honestly, thats great to hear.
American car-centric culture is literally directly killing people, killing the environment, killing our ability to design cities and public transit…
You’d think the least we could do is be competent at driving.
But fucking nope, not a chance.
I used to live in Seattle.
Almost no one understands that in significant rain, you need to double your following distance.
Still fucking baffles me to this day. Rain City people don’t know how to drive… in the rain.
A big reason why I’m all for public transport is to get people off the road who shouldn’t be there in the first place so they’re out of my way when I’m driving.
Kind of like how I support new urbanism because it means less wilderness plowed under for suburbs, so I have more native habitat. I don’t want to live in a city, I just want most people to live in them so I can ve alone with my woodland friends.
“… get people off the road who shouldn’t be there in the first place…”
i get the sentiment but i think this is problematic.
who deserves the right to drive then?
i hear you, “people who are capable”. but real life isn’t so cut and dry. the way it works in america now is awful fs, you can back this up with death statistics fairly easily; however, i think this tribalistic “us vs them” attitude drivers get is emblematic of deeper problems in our culture.
everyone is all for the animal farm until they’re the other. cliche, i know, but it’s true.
Driving isn’t a right, it’s a privilege. And we determine who can drive by testing them to see if they know and will follow the rules.
Plus the old dude I saw today with shaking hands and an oxygen tube in his nose deserves to have an alternative where he won’t kill himself or others.
oh yeah, it’s surely a privilege to be allowed to participate in society.
the argument “driving isn’t a right, it’s a privilege” falls entirely flat on its face when there exist no alternatives for a large majority of people and their lives. hardcore boomer energy that blatantly ignores the reality on the ground.
i agree, there are people who shouldn’t drive. i wish i didn’t have to drive.
that simply isn’t feasible in the current reality, tho.
driving can once again be a privilege only after it returns to no longer being a necessity. it is the natural right of all peoples to participate in their society. i agree with the sentiment, driving is a privilege that should be earned. but we should do ground work to make that true, we can’t just ignore the real world and indignantly say whatever we feel like; real life isn’t harry potter and the symbols and words we create bare no direct power over reality. driving is not a privilege in todays america, you don’t get to be the arbiter of decision here. in a practical sense, driving is necessary. the right to transportation and movement evolves with the age, man; it doesn’t get narrower as time goes on in the way a lot of western law seems to want to imply nowadays.
Death statistics?
https://everytownresearch.org/graph/gun-death-vs-motor-vehicle-accident-deaths-since-1999/
This source doesn’t go up to 2024, but only fairly recently have guns killed more Americans than cars, each year, and the overall numbers aren’t too far off.
Cars certainly cause far more property damage than guns.
Anyone in a car is easily capable of killing another human being or doing them massive injury.
I agree with you that there are many more pervasive and complex issues … driving (sorry) Americans to be dangerous irresponsible drivers…
But cars are deadly weapons, whether driven as such intentionally or unintentionally.
Maybe people should be more stringently screened and qualified before they are allowed and trusted to regularly use them.
For the record, I think you shouldn’t be able to own a firearm without having gone through a certification course, but as it stands right now, only 10 US states require that.
https://everytownresearch.org/rankings/law/training-required-to-purchase-guns/
All states require you complete a certification for concealed carry… but you don’t need that to legally buy and possess a gun.
Yeah, and all the morons from the Midwest stick their thumbs in their belt loops and insist that they really know how to drive in the snow, don’cha know, not like you coastal people.
And yet there isn’t a single guardrail anywhere in Minnesota that hasn’t got a Chevy Suburban shoved halfway through it.
That would be especially funny coming from a Minnesotan aimed at … at least myself, as a Seattleite.
For starters: It almost never seriously snows in Seattle, so we don’t have anywhere near as good an infrastructure for clearing snow.
Not saying the average Seattleite is adept at snow driving… but… Seattle has A LOT of steep hills.
I’m reasonably confident Minnesota is as flat as a pancake in comparison.
(Checked. MN’s tallest ‘mountain’ is 2300 feet. WA’s is 14,000. Their ‘mountain’ is unironically what I would call a big hill. WA has almost 150 mountains taller than 2000 feet, by relative geographical prominence, not absolute height)
A fairly small amount of snow, especially if it can be cold long enough to freeze into ice, and you’re looking at something like 30 to 40% of Seattle’s roads being either insanely dangerous, or roads that are cutoff by said chokepoints.
I’m talking 18% to 22% grade.
Apparently the steepest road in Minneapolis is ‘nearly’ 15%.
-.-
That is why a foot of snow basically shuts down Seattle.
Now… going further…
If you live in the PNW and actually try to see all the sights… aka, leave Seattle…
Well you hit the fucking Cascade mountains, where it often snows considerably, the foothills have tons of smaller cities and rural communities with garbage tier snaking roads of extreme grade, and on the east side of the state, they get massive snow dumps all the time, though it is much more flat.
So if you’ve actually driven or lived around a good deal of WA… you’ve probably had to encounter a lot more difficult snow conditions than an average MidWest driver.
I’ve driven through Snoqualmie Pass in the snow. Much of Wyoming, also. Yeah, midwesterners have no concept. They just think they do.
US: predominantly automatic transmission, low speed limits
Germany: predominantly manual transmission, higher speed limits and no limits on around half of autobahns (motorways)
US road deaths per capita twice of Germany.
Draw your own conclusions.
Probably more related to the god-awful infrastructure design in the US, like stroads and an unfathomable tendency to use stop signs for a lot of things they are just not fit for, like to replace speed bumps, chicanes, and roundabouts.
Also the better comparable statistic should be deaths per distance traveled in cars.
Here is the list 6.9 vs 4.2 deaths per 1 billion km. 12.8 vs. 3.35 per 100’000 inhabitants.
But you need both for a fuller puncture, not everyone involved/dieing is in a vehicle.
Not to mention the DUI rates in the US are astronomical. Over 1/3 of motor fatalities are alcohol related in the US.
Chicanes are the best part about riding a sport bike! I get to drag knees on public roads!
You think this is something? You think this is bad? This? This chicanery? He’s done worse. That billboard! Are you telling me that a man just happens to fall like that? No! He orchestrated it! Jimmy! He defecated through a sunroof! And I saved him! And I shouldn’t have. I took him into my own firm! What was I thinking? He’ll never change. He’ll never change! Ever since he was 9, always the same! Couldn’t keep his hands out of the cash drawer! But not our Jimmy! Couldn’t be precious Jimmy! Stealing them blind! And he gets to be a lawyer!? What a sick joke! I should’ve stopped him when I had the chance! And you - you have to stop him!
Public roads are not a racetrack. You never know when there’s going to be a kid chasing a ball or something around the corner.
Germany has much stricter requirements to get a driver’s license. That leads to better driving skills on average.
I would, but I ran out of crayons
What if we’re too American to draw an appropriate conclusion from that?
How many football field sized conclusions would it be?
Quick Google
In 2024 36% of Germans reported using the car daily.
In 2023 95.3% of Americans older than 16 drive on occasions.
83 million Germans, 63% above 16
340 million Americans, 65% above 16
52 million potential drivers in Germany, 17 million actually drive
221 million potential drivers in America, 210 million drive daily
17 million vs 210 million daily drivers
~12x more drivers, only 2x more death
Per capita isn’t really a way to look at it
Besides automatic cars or lack of a manual transmission is not causing accidents.
Chance of death goes up significantly with speed
No one has ever crashed because they couldn’t go over the speed limit
Downvoters mad to find out cars are inherently unsafe and need very good infrastructure and to be remotely safe.
Downvoters mad that Ek= ½mv2, and speed, funnily enough, is dangerous.
Downvoters mad that manual transmission isn’t making cars safer.
Car go vroom vroom, but public transport go better
Fax
83 million Germans, 63% above 16
Not sure why you think this is relevant. Children aren’t allowed to drive in Germany.
Well you can start driving in US at 15
Like I said quick Google
Even less Germans driving, proves my point more
Germans only really drive if they are willing and able
Americans are forced to drive
Car deaths in America aren’t happening because they have automatic transmissions and can’t drive as fast as they want.
Just the seer amount of drivers, more cars on roads to crash into, and less willing and able drivers.
No, crashes in the US happen because Americans are shit drivers. They are shit drivers because you get a free driving license with box of cereal. Germany on the other hand has one of the strictest driving tests there is. A German with a driving license has had many hours of instruction from a professional instructor.
In addition, American cars are shit. Lots of poorly maintained and unsafe vehicles on the road with very lax regulation. By contrast, German cars have to pass a very comprehensive yearly safety inspection.
It’s been difficult to find manual transmisssions for a couple of decades here in the US. That ship has sailed.
While most of my life I vowed my kids would learn manual, I gave up on that idea because
- manual transmission cars are rare and disappearing
- automatics now are more fuel efficient
- CVT are reliable and even more efficient
- EVs don’t shift
My kids started driving in a world of automatics and will soon be in a world with no transmissions
cvts are reliable
Now THAT’S a statement made by the utterly deranged
I think he is confusing CVT with the toyota eCVT which is quite different and is actually reliable
The Prius system is a modern marvel and deserves a better name than eCVT.
Belt type CVTs are trash. I don’t care that your Subaru has 57,000 trouble free miles, it’s going to die.
If they aren’t made by Nissan, they are.
Subaru
https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2023/MC-10231303-0001.pdfHonda
https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2023/MC-10236086-0001.pdfGM
https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2020/MC-10213745-9999.pdfMitsubishi
https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2024/MC-10252683-0001.pdfChrysler uses the Nissan trans and they are king of the shit heap.
Belt CVTs - I’m right there with you, but take a look into the more modern geared CVTs such as Toyota e-CVT in their hybrids - I think Honda have a similar tech. It’s a planetary gear system that provides infinite gears without the rubber band feel that plagued belt CVTs and hella-reliable.
I’m a petrolhead at heart and would love more options for manuals but in lieu of that, a geared CVT is by far the next best transmission and 100x better than a traditional auto.
Even better, jump in one and take it for a drive - because there are gears, it feels more connected to the motor - almost manual-like response and no sluggish delay like a traditional auto.
You literally pick your revs by pushing the throttle more or less, they’re magic for hills or when the car is packed since you’re never waiting for revs to climb up into the power nor holding a speed because any faster and you have to change again which takes you out of the power again. If you want more power, you simply modulate that with the throttle and the revs rise instantly to accommodate.
CVTs are good for tractors that need a wide range of torque ratios but still stay automated.
They’re good for go karts and for auto manufacturers that want their product to be worthless about time you pay it off.
I’ve had a Subaru CVT for 10+ years with over 200k miles no issues. Anecdotal yes, but I’ve grown fond of the CVT feel, it’s smooth, I like it.
EVs don’t shift
I know there’s no reason for them to, but a small part of me wishes there was. Something so satisfying about being good at managing gears
There are simulated transmissions for the weirdos.
I’m not that into the idea, and the simulation kind of ruins what I’m after anyway. I want to feel it when I get a good/bad shift and I want it to matter.
Sure, you can simulate the engine rumbling and the gears grinding. You can even rock the boat a bit with some hydraulics. When I shift “wrong” you can make me feel it for sure. But when I shift right, it’s not just smooth so that you can’t feel it. It’s smooth so that you can feel it ya know? (Okay maybe it wasn’t that smooth and what you’re really feeling is a slight clutch dump but wasn’t it fun)
I feel this post in my old bones.
So true. I’ve never been more tempted to keep a classic car, even if it’s just an old shit box with manual transmission.
I seem to recall some EV having a 2 speed transmission. A modern one, not like the Electrek that had a 5 speed manual
Isn’t the civic si series all manual?
The Si and the R! They both sell like hotcakes, waited 8 months for my 2024 Si. I’m not sure why Honda doesn’t increase the volume, there’s still a lot of demand - maybe the margins aren’t as good as their SUVs :(
Wow I had no idea, that’s crazy. I went with the 2024 sport touring because I do city driving 90% of the time, but that Si looked NICE
I bought a civic in 2006 and it took 6 weeks to get one. A manual would have taken much longer
When I learned how to drive, manual transmissions were higher performance and better fuel efficiency: side by side comparisons of the exact same model of car would show better 0-60 and quarter mile times, while having slightly better EPA fuel efficiency ratings, for the manual transmission.
At some point, though, the sheer number of gears in an automatic transmission surpassed those in the typical manual gearbox, and the average automatic today has 6 gears, up to 9 in some Mercedes and 10 in certain Ford and GM models. So they could start selecting gear ratios for better fuel efficiency, without “wasting” a valuable gear slot. There was a generation of Corvettes that was notorious for having a 6th gear that was worthless for actual performance but helped the car sneak by with a better highway fuel mileage rating.
And the automatics became much faster at shifting gears, with even the ultra high performance supercars shifting to paddle shifters where the driver could still control the gear, but with the shifting mechanism automated. Ferrari’s paddle shifter models started outperforming the traditional stick shift models in the early 2000’s, if I remember correctly. As those gear shifting technologies migrated over to regular automatics, the performance gap shrunk and then ended up going the other way.
At this point there’s not enough reason for a true manual stickshift transmission. It’s no longer faster or more economic, so it’s just a pure fun. Which is fine, but does make it hard to actually design one for any given model of car.
In the US it’s not really even cheaper - as in maybe you could save a couple hundred on a few models but most won’t offer a choice and it’s nothing in proportion to the cost of the car and the chances of finding one are so small it’s not even worth trying for most cars. There may be a few - are jeeps still available?
My favorite car was a Miata with a stick (even though I’m too tall to fit) - maybe I need to track down an older one before they’re gone forever
Had a manual 2016 Mazda 3. Took a bit to find it with all the options I wanted but it was available at the time.
• Wanted to Start on a Steep Hill? We had a Tool for that: it was Called “Flooring the Gas while letting go off the Clutch”
IT AIN’T NO GOOD MORNIN’ WITHOUT THE SMELL OF NICELY BURNED CLUTCH
I was going to say, I always had my e-brake on when I parked my car and so I always started the car with it on.
Does he mean slowly let off the clutch while releasing the e-brake? Does he put on his e-brake if he stops on a hill, in traffic too!
I’ve had to use the ebrake method before for a hill that was wayyyy too steep and a fence gate closed behind me.
You basically just let off the clutch and press on the gas until the car wants to move forward, then you let off the e brake and go without going backwards.
That’s when you are supposed to use Mr_Mofu’s technique!
that’s mr mr.mofu to you, kind sir.
There are some steep stop sign intersections in San Francisco that I’ve had to use the e brake for.
Seattle, too. VW Vanagon Westphalia with the kitchenette and poptop. Heavy, gutless, and steep roads are a tricky combo.
If you’re on a steep hill, yes sometimes you need to use the handbrake to get moving. This had to be demonstrated when I got my licence, but to be fair some manual vehicles now have automatic hill start. Still a good technique to learn because it doesn’t always activate.
We’d park my buddies Mustang on a hill wherever we went in case it wouldn’t start. LOL, everyone made fun of him saying it was a Pinto. (<- it was this, but really, really shitty)
Ah the Mustang II. What a historically bad letdown.
