Today’s Pontiac GP post got a discussion going about clutches and parking brakes, for starting off in a stick shift car. Let’s open the discussion a bit more. How did you learn to use a clutch (and stick shift)? And what’s the best way to teach someone?
not me
I got an early start, on tractors when I was nine. There was no real instruction, but somehow I figured it out, with a little divine intervention (full story here). Pretty soon, I could play the clutch friction point to be able to back a tractor at snail’s pace to hook up an implement. Nothing like the farmer standing there with the hitch in hand to give me the motivation to not run him down.
Fast forward some 25 years later, and I’m called on to teach my 20-year old sister in law how to drive the Ford Fiesta she just bought, having never driven it before. We went to an empty parking lot, and with the engine idling only, I had her repeatedly find the beginning of the friction point of the clutch, and just move her foot ever so gently to bump the car along, a little nudge at a time, in both first gear and reverse. I had her “bump” the car all over the parking lot, for some time. The point being that becoming truly familiar with the friction point, and knowing how to delicately play it is essential to mastering a clutch, for parking and for starting on hills.I’ve used the same technique successfully several times since.
All too often, inexperienced drivers use the clutch like an on-off switch, or roll backwards on hills when starting because they don’t really know how to use the friction point to keep the car from rolling backwards. Even at idle, a car will generally not start rolling back much on a steep hill, if the friction point is engaged before the driver lifts the right foot off the brake. It should not take much gas or slipping the clutch at all to get going on a hill. And it shouldn’t require a handbrake either. Becoming intimate with the friction point is the crucial first step.
You’re absolutely right Paul
Once mastered, and most new drivers don’t find it difficult, it becomes a complete second nature and moving a car very slowly using just your left foot is a useful tool.
As for learning it, in Europe of course it’s a basic skill, maybe a slightly daunting and/or frustrating one at first, and the only way is practice. It’s the automotive cardoon of riding a bike – once learnt, never forgotten.
When my daughters were coming of driving age, I insisted they learn the shifter, and I provided my SAAB wagon, which survived well over 200k miles, so they didn’t hurt it too badly (the original clutch and tranny).
I told them that I didn’t care what they owned, but they had to be able to drive these things, and, today they both own shifters.
Both shared happy stories. that they LOVED offering rides at college to guys, and seeing their realization that “she can drive this cool car, but I can’t”, and additional cred with a mechanic’s shop when the extra pedal got noticed.
Way to boost a girl, I ,thought!
All five of my kids can drive a manual shift. My son and three my daughters own manuals. My other daughter’s husband won’t buy a manual shifted vehicle of any kind.
My 17 year old daughter learned to drive a manual, since all of our cars are currently manual she didn’t have much choice. I outsourced the actual teaching to a driving school, but made a point of selecting a location that offers manual cars.
She got additional practice in our cars, and passed her test in a manual car during rush hour in a big city.
I’ve also tried to teach her some basic mechanical concepts, like explaining how the clutch works using two dinner plates. I’ve also involved her in doing maintenance on her car, such as fluid changes, spark plugs, etc. Even if she never does her own work, I figure it is useful to have a basic understanding of what is involved.
I don’t think many of her friends know how to drive manual cars, but some of them seem to be impressed by the fact she does – she has got comments like “Is this your car? Do you know how to drive it? I wish I knew how to drive one of these things…” or “Nice car – it has a stick – that’s badass!”
If I had to teach someone to drive a manual myself, Paul’s method seems like a good one – but would probably be easiest with a diesel or other high torque vehicle…
Exactly, “it becomes a complete second nature”, in whatever car you drive. It’s not rocket science or a good old Fuller 13 speed….we’re talking about a synchronized 6 speed (at the most) manual transmission.
Still, when you pass your driving test in an automatic you’re not allowed to drive a manual. That is, until you pass a (new) driving test in a manual.
Not being able to drive a manual is considered to a handicap of some sort. Just look at the warning signs on cars with an automatic transmission on the used car lots in Europe. Those are the ones to stay clear of, can be had for very little money however. Frankly, I have never driven an AM car, nor spend time in one myself.
Yes CM, I clearly remember the days that automatics were only supposed to be driven by the elderly and the disabled….That’s how the little DAFs got their image. When you saw or heard an automatic in those days you just knew there was a crutch or two somewhere in the car.
I’ve got my driver’s license since 1984, my first drive in an automatic was in 2011. In a 1969 car.
Spot on Roger: basic skill. It baffles me that manuals are such a mystery to so many in other countries but if you didn’t learn from the get go on one I guess it would be strange adjusting.
Case in point – but the other way up – my first experience of driving an automatic wasn’t until I was 29 (rental in Australia) and I had to really concentrate hard on keeping my left foot bolted to the floor for the first couple of days. Even now on the rare occasions I encounter an Autobox it feels very counterintuitive.
Although it’s one of those things that takes tons of practice (it took a year or two of daily driving for me to get really proficient – completely self-taught), for me, lack of basic mechanical knowledge is a dealbreaker as far as teaching people goes. I don’t even bother teaching anymore unless I get the impression that the person has enough basic feel for cars and will eventually ‘get it’, because a good portion of driving a stick is the visceral touch and sound of the pedals/engine/shifter.
At the risk of sounding horribly misogynistic (and truthfully, LOTS of guys are equally clueless and I don’t bother teaching them either), it’s something I notice in women a lot – if they are so indifferent to cars that can barely put an auotmatic gear selector in “D” and have no idea what the RMP gauge means (or even what know what RMP stands for)… are they really ever going to learn how to drive a manual transmission?
I do have one female friend who is pretty car literate and could probably learn alright if I let her try, but when your stick shift is a leased car… the last thing you want to do is teach people on it. Too bad I don’t have a spare beater to play with.
I’d be interested to see if other people have had the same experience, though. I feel like it’s one of those things that you learn on your own, rather than having it taught to you.
RMP? That’s a new one to me 🙂
I’ve taught a handful of girls how to drive stick. More often than not they know nothing about cars… they all did fine.
Whoops! Wrote that one in too much of a hurry. Guess I fall into the category of the people I’m talking about 😛
It’s probably not a sex thing really, but more of a personality and possibility a generational trend… all of the older women in my family were perfectly fine with sticks, but I can only think of one girl from high school or college that actually knew how to proficiently drive a manual. Can’t say I know of many more guys that can, either, honestly. It’s a dying art in the United States.
What’s RMP?
RPM* (the tachometer) …. ’twas a typo
The funny thing is my Mom fits the very definition of not caring about or knowing about cars but she’s very proficient at at manual trans operation and even misses it in her current car, in fact she taught me how to go through the gears in the Jetta when I was elementary school(often she’d press the clutch and let me shift into the next gear). My Dad, conversely, who does have basic mechanical knowledge of a car and who is actually into cars himself, doesn’t like driving stick at all.
Anyone with 4 working limbs can drive a manual transmission without being explained how the pistons move the crankshaft or how the synchronizers work. I think trying to delve into the finer science of how a car works just makes non-car people’s eyes glaze over and ultimately prevents them from paying attention to the basic stuff you’re explaining in between.
I kind of learned stick shift on pop’s 93 Legacy on Central New York dirt roads and the local fire station, but my 5′ 11″ frame is a bit too big for that car. After burying the clutch pedal in the carpet fibers I would move my knee up and bash it into the plastic under the steering wheel. My dad’s 96 Legacy was better, but I did not get much time behind the wheel and I stuck a piece of wood in front of a tire so I did not roll down the sloped driveway while working on reversing. I really learned the art of Stick Shift driving on an 88 Saab 900 Turbo that had terminal rust. Saab’s are tricky when it comes to their stick shifts so I got some extra experience that way. When the situation is right I am going to buy a used stick shift Honda or Toyota to practice on some time in the future.
I’m intrigued as to how you could be too big for a Legacy. I’m 5’11” and I’ve never found a car that didn’t fit me. That includes Fiat Seicento, Hyundai Atoz, and other tiny cars unknown to the US market.
Having said that, I’ve never driven a Legacy.
I almost always drive or ride withe seat nearly all the way back. Rarely are my knees bent at a 90 Degree angle because I get cramps and pains if I cannot sprawl out. I only use my ankle for the accelerator, but use my lower leg for the other two pedals.
I just took a motorcycle riding class and they used the exact same method for teaching the new riders how to use a clutch, and it was very effective.
Me? I was taught on a ’41 Farmall B with very little clutch travel. I also learned later on with that tractor that if the clutch was dumped it would pop the front wheels up, great fun for a young kid, until someone told the parents!
For a automobile, I was asked to move a ’83 Toyota pickup that was parked on a hill, and left to my own devices until I finally figured it out, its a little different going from a hand throttle to a foot throttle and not having a torquey tractor engine.
Tractors are not like cars (trucks) in that the engines speed is usually set by a control lever, not foot operated. I drove tractors before I did much other driving. Will be running a 16 ft device to cut hay this summer.
First thing I ever drove was a John Deere 70 with the wide spaced front tires while I was way younger than 16. Probably about the same age as that kid in the picture above. Driving it is more akin to running an old steam engine than a car. To pop the clutch in, I had to stand up and give it a good heave. The breaks were more for keeping it in place than for slowing it down (throttle and clutch were used for that). The friction point that Paul wrote about is where it comes into play in comparison to driving a manual car.
We had an 8N when I was in Middle and High School, so that was likely my first experience. A Sunday School teacher also took a group of us camping on his farm one weekend and we each got to drive his old MG around “dual” and then “solo.” Dad got the ’71 Vega around this time, and it’s highly possible I may have made some clandestine practice circuits in the back yard when opportunity arose.
I taught my wife in my Suzuki Samurai after breaking my (clutch) leg in a motorcycle accident. I had my brother take the passenger side front seat out (I was in a toe-to-hip cast) and we practiced in the driveway first, then out on our local streets. I tease Beth to this day that I’m 1/2″ shorter on the left side because of those lessons.
Both my sons learned on my own 8N and then in my New Beetle (Herbie).
More recently, our niece stayed with us last summer, and I taught her to drive a manual, first on the 8N, and then in Herbie.
Jason’s comment below prompted me to add that we had a 1966 Sears Craftsman SS12 garden tractor (3 speed, I think), and I got a *lot* of seat time on it growing up. Dad still uses it.
I spent a lot of time on lawn mowers (3 and 4 speeds of early ’80s vintage) plus my father’s Ford tractor and his F-150 around his seven acres. That helped a lot to get the feel for the clutch, its engagement point, and coordination of it all. Transitioning to the road was no big deal as I had been driving various types of vehicles since age 10.
Teaching this skill is a different world entirely. I sort of taught my sister (you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t throw it in) and she was ultimately able to navigate her ’92 Ford Ranger five-speed well enough. It was like Paul said, a matter of taking off repeatedly to get the hang of it all. It also helped my sister to know that she had a four hour drive to college right after getting the pickup, so she was on her own.
Some people simply have the finesse needed – admittedly, it isn’t a lot – and some don’t.
I’m curious to see how my offspring does when I start teaching that skill using my ’63 Ford. Driving a manual transmission is, sadly, a dying art in the United States.
My experience mirrors Ed and Jason’s. Only the equipment was different, consisting of a riding mower my father bought from Trustworthy Hardware, followed by a John Deere Model B (with a lever clutch) and an Oliver 550. All before age 13.
The first car with a stick was my cousin’s 69 MG Midget. Sadly, I have not had a stick shift car to pass this skill to my offspring. There is probably still time, though.
I learned quite simply by watching my parents drive… when the opportunity arrived and my parents were gone for a day, I took advantage of a long driveway and a second car with a 4 speed. After a couple hours of stop and go between 1st, neutral and reverse I had it down.
The third time I practiced apparently my parents were coming home earlier than expected. I saw them in the rear view mirror. Their view was over 200 yards, so I proceeded to quickly put the car back into the garage, ran to the house, put the keys back where I found them and disappeared into my room (I was 14 at the time). I heard hello we are home, and nothing more. I got away with it?
About an hour later I emerged for dinner. After the plates were full and I had my first bite of food in my mouth, my mother asked how my “driving lessons” were going with her car. I choked big time and we had a good laugh. Their only requirement was stay off the road.
Good times.
That’s kind of like A Christmas Story but without Christmas.
I also watched my parents drive their Honda Civic hatchbacks and that ingrained the concept. I also intently watched my school bus driver (in the late 1980s, our school buses were still stick shifts, these huge, awesome floor shifters) while she/he drove.
When I got my learner’s permit, my dad took me out in his old truck which was also stick and had no power steering (Mazda B2300, stripper). We spent the first 3 weeks driving slowly around a cemetery and then back streets until I got the hang of the clutch. Then hilly back roads until I could learn not to stall out on inclined stop lights.
After all that, he bought me a 1987 Crown Victoria and let me take the actual test in it. What a breeze compared to that truck.
I would teach a child the same way, in a safe, quiet place where stalling is not embarrassing (i.e. no other 16 year olds to point and laugh and discourage).
My Dad took me to the car dealer and we test drive a ’93 Probe GT when I was 16…that’s how I learned.
Then, when I was 19, I worked for an automotive paint store, and all our delivery trucks were sticks, so that’s when I became proficient.
Now, three of my six cars are sticks. My wife doesn’t really want to learn to drive one all that badly, so even though I’ve had my 2012 Focus almost three years, she’s only driven up and down the driveway with it, just enough to be able to move it.
I taught her to get it moving without using the gas pedal, just to get a feel for the clutch takeup.
Wow, a 2012 for three years, it is like I am in a time warp, but that is totally believable.
2012 Focuses came out in April 2011, smart aleck. 🙂
My older brother taught me the rudimentary basics one afternoon in a big church’s parking lot that was on a slope. A lot of emphasis was placed on the “bite point” as he called it. The old man gave further “on the road” instruction once I could start and stop on hills without holding at the bite point – that was considered something women did was a no-no. This was in the foothills of eastern TN. He grew up in rural West Virginia and if he could get started with out holding with the clutch on steep mountain grades, so could everyone else, especially his youngest son who only had to deal with TN hills.
The old man was a big fan of Jackie Stewart and his driving smoothly technique, which he did very well. At 78 he’s still smooth if a little slower.
The only person I’ve every taught was a simple minded, but likable and hard working fellow who I worked with when I started my career with my state’s DOT. At that time, most of our trucks were stick shift hair shirt specials. No A/C, radio, etc. He had never heard of or discovered the “bite point” and compensated by full throttle applications while simultaneously letting the clutch out. This does wear clutches out fast. I showed him what little I could and he then only revved to half throttle and would pause for a nanosecond near the bite point, but the quarterly clutch replacements did stop so I guess it was progress. We started getting automatics after this time period and he and the maintenance shop were very happy.
I don’t guess my 11 year old will ever learn because I don’t have or know anyone who has anything to teach her on. This may be justification for a curbside classic!
We had an abandoned WW2 AAF base just west of Dodge City. Dad took my sister and I out there with his 49 chevy (three on tree) and tried to teach us. My sister wound up learning from me as he ran out of patience. Learned how to drive and learned the problems associated with 3OTT.
Paying it forward my son learned on a 79 Datsun truck with five speed. The woodlands mall just north of Houston was being built and he learned in the JCPenney parking lot. Pretty much the way you described both times. Clutch is always more difficult than shifting.
Interesting question. The way Paul describes teaching the friction point is an excellent way to start, but it helps a lot to have a car with a nice linear clutch takeup and decent pedal effort. I taught several family members how to drive a standard using my wife’s ’92 Civic Si. It always went well after a bit of practice. The same exercise was a lot harder once they “graduated” to my ’83 F-150 with a 300 six and granny gear 4 speed. Trying to start someone off on the Ford was always an ordeal, but fortunately I had the luxury of teaching the basics on one of the easiest manuals to use in the Civic.
This experience came in handy later in my career, when one of my duties was acting as the driver trainer for my employer. Teaching people whose primary job was not driving or operating, such as electricians and bridge workers, to drive trucks equipped with 13 or 18 speed transmissions was always interesting. Today such trucks are invariably equipped with the excellent Allison automatic, but back when this was an expensive option and the transmissions were not nearly as robust or flexible as they are today. Most people picked it up fairly quickly, but I had a few otherwise excellent tradesmen who had never driven a standard transmission vehicle before. When that happened I started them out in the Toyota pickup we used for an office runabout and worked up from there. I don’t recall anyone who didn’t get it eventually, but it did cost me a few clutch jobs!
Here downunder (NZ) it was ‘normal enough’ for a child to ‘drive’ on his/her father’s knee (ie: doing the steering for a while on a back country lane or whatever).. as soon as the legs could reach the pedals then it was ‘game-on’!!! For me, this happened at age 12. My dad just stopped the Zephyr, and said, ‘You take over’ lol ..changing gear was just a natural thing we did without any instruction needed as we had been watching this for years anyway, and every time dad left us in the car we would slide over and ‘practice driving and changing gear’! On my first driving experience i floored the throttle (as i always did when ‘play-driving’) and alarmed my dad a tad ..’Don’t press the throttle so hard, you’re going too fast!’ …a petrolhead was created at that moment.. nothing has changed since …i don’t even know how many cars and bikes i have anymore ..most are 8 cyls ..some 6’s of various config ..5 ..4 cyls ..3 cyl ..2 cyls ..and singles ..some blown ..some turbo ..some not ..3 handbuilts ..rest factory products
First drive in a Maori Mustang vcool
I learned how to drive with a clutch when I borrowed my father’s 1986 Jetta Turbo Diesel as my first car was automatic. I had to borrow his car quite often because my car was often needing repairs!
A few years ago, my current 1993 Toyota truck made me learn how to drive without a clutch as the clutch slave cylinder went bad. At least, the clutch cylinder is easy to replace on these and I fixed it the next day! A friend of mine had the same issue with a 1995 Mazda B2300 but he kept driving it without the clutch until he sent it to the junkyard as replacing the clutch cylinder on this Mazda (and on Rangers) requires to remove the transmission and it already had quite a few other issues…
I learned on a motorcycle, specifically my dads 76 cb750 super sport, in a parking lot. A bit nerve wracking, given his yelling commands I couldn’t hear through my helmet, plus the fear of dropping his bike, and not to mention the way it would buck when I didn’t get the clutch quite right, but having a multi plate wet clutch to start on allows one a little bit more forgiveness of slippage before one masters the bite point.
We usually had at least one manual car around when I was growing up, so I knew the concept well. When I took my drivers test though, it was on an automatic (’67 Ambassador).
My first car, a 1950 Mercury, was offered to me with the caveat, “if you can make it run and drive it out of here, it’s yours.” That was the first time I operated a car with a manual transmission; no one ever actually gave me any instruction.
Here’s what I think makes a successful manual driver:
#1- Desire / interest. I taught my wife to drive a stick before we were married. She can do it; she just has NO desire to do it. “Why go through the trouble when you could just put it in drive?” As a result, I am on my third vehicle that she has never driven. I am hoping to get a little more enthusiasm from my middle daughter, about to turn 15, because she will probably end up with my manual PT Cruiser.
#2- Some level of understanding of things mechanical. I believe it really helps to know what is actually happening when you depress or release “that pedal”. The feel of the friction point is easier to get if you have some idea of what you are manipulating. I have already started to explain it to daughter #2 and haven’t lost her yet.
By the way, I have always used Paul’s technique to teach people- no gas pedal! Works great.
I had a brief lesson on a Schramm Pneumatractor when I worked at their factory one summer. But a couple summers later when I needed a vehicle to get to work at an engineering shop, my dad showed up at work one afternoon with my new (to me) 76 Courier and said, “here, drive it home.” I at least knew intellectually how the clutch and gears worked from having watched thoughout my childhood, but it was still an exciting trial by fire, including a couple of uphill stop signs, and an uphill stoplight that was (mostly) yellow as I went through it… Luckily it was a fairly torquey engine. (Trial by fire was Dad’s teaching M.O though – I learned to drive first in their 77 B body Impala wagon on I-95 between Providence and New Haven with the whole family in the car.)
Number 1 son watched enough Top Gear that he insisted on a manual for his first car. (I may have had a little to do with it too, but don’t tell his mom that! 😉 ) He learned on his Mazda 6 in a parking lot last summer with a process similar to Paul’s – basically, learn to get it going with only the clutch pedal. He harasses his buddies who can’t drive stick, and is gearing up (so to speak) to teach his sister later this summer.
(Interesting how many of us learned first on tractors. The Schramm Pneumatractor is fascinating – straight six block using three cylinders as engine and the other three as air compressor – it would make an interesting CC if anyone ever sees one and posts it to the cohort…)
I first learned at age 10 on a tractor then in an Austin Gipsy though that was the entire driving experience not just the clutch that thing is where I learnt Double declutching too no syncro on first plus if you doubled it you could get out of low 4×4 on the move, Im going to teach my 13yr old daughter these skills shortly down the river in my $200 Dunga Nissan she had a go previously in the Corolla and muffed the takeoff but steered it fine and hit nothing, she first drove in the Corona diesel automatic we had on the front lawn at 10 so off to a good start.
Manual transmissions were still very common when I was growing up in small town/rural midwest in the 50’s and 60’s. My paternal grandparents never owned an automatic in all their decades of driving. The only time my grandmother ever drove one was when her new Chevy II (she got one of the first of the 62s with the four cylinder and three-speed and drove it for about ten years until her eyesight was failing and the family decided it was time to stop) was in the shop for some timing adjustments. She professed to hate the Powerglide-equipped loaner!
Anyway, I think I learned a lot by riding with them and my Dad who drove manuals in the 50’s/early 60’s. My grandfather let me sit in his lap and steer and even “shift” his 58 BelAir from gear to gear while he clutched. You kind of get a good feel for a manual from all that childhood observation and “experience.” When I got my learner’s permit in 65, my grandmother encouraged me to drive her everywhere in the Chevy II and by then I was quite competent with a three speed. Although my driver’s training car was an automatic, I took my driver’s test in a Falcon with a manual. I bought a 60 VW the following year and thought its four speed on the floor was a piece of cake compared to the three-on-the tree set-up.
I’ve never taught anyone to drive a stick but have gotten a lot of laughs from watching people do it on YouTube. Out of a network of family and friends today, I only know two or three people who continue to drive sticks. One just bought a new Mazda 6 with a six-speed. Urban traffic has pretty much wiped out the pleasure of shifting for most of us.
You got that right. Living in Vancouver, I try to avoid going into/out of Portland during working hours with my 5-speed Versa. It’s no fun clutching 100 times per mile just to get onto the I-205 bridge.
It was so long ago that I don’t really remember much about it, other than just getting in a car and learning through repetition. A couple of friends had access to VW Bugs and those were what I mostly learned on. My father viewed cars purely as transportation appliances and the first automatic car he ever had (1954 Plymouth) made him a firm believer in two pedal driving. The first few cars I owned were all automatics; the first stick shift I purchased was a VW Super Beetle. I remember the drive home from the dealer was a little hairy because of rush hour traffic but I managed.
I taught my wife to drive a stick in my Mustang GT. I took her to an unused parking lot and showed her how to engage the clutch and move the gear shift; the biggest hurdle was convincing her that killing the motor would not hurt the car. Once she realized that she caught on pretty quickly and even had a Celica GT with 5 speed as her daily driver for a few years. I haven’t owned or even driven a stick shift car for over 20 years now. Maybe it is just incipient old age but the thought of dealing with stop and go traffic, even in the small city where I live, makes me crazy. One of things I have on my retirement list is to acquire another car with a stick to take out once a month and run through the gears.
I also grew up on a farm, so it was a lot of stuff, an IH 560 and a JD 4010, along with a ’51 Chevy 3100 “Advanced Design”. After that, a ’65 C15, and then what seems like dozens more after I got my ‘farm license’.
My son and daughter both learned on a ’74 VW thing, my grandson (he’s 7, and very tall) will be learning this summer.
We have a Jetta 6 speed TDi wagon at work, and it automatically raises the engine speed as you reach the friction point, in both forward and reverse.
One of my co-workers has a ’12 VW CC (he picked it over an Impala), and it has ‘auto hold’ which makes it even easier to drive. My how technology has advanced…
One of the other Jetta TDi’s has DSG, which is a marvel of engineering and software, but it does need to be serviced on a schedule.
When I was in high school, I had an older friend who had just been given a very used ’85-ish Mazda 323 sedan by his parents, but no lessons on how to work its 5-speed transmission. We were going out to lunch at school on the first day he had it, and by the 27th or so time he stalled it out on our ~1 mile trek, someone else suggested I drive. They incorrectly assumed I had a license and actual knowledge of how to drive one because they knew I was into cars, but I did not hesitate to hop in the driver’s seat. I knew how to work a stick shift in theory; I’d practiced so many times in a neighbor’s junked TR-7 when I was a wee lad, and I’d driven my dad’s (automatic) van many times in traffic already, so how hard could it be?
Not hard at all, as it turns out! I’m sure it wasn’t pretty, but I got it done and felt like a pro on the way back. I stalled out once at an intersection, but it was as the car was coming to a stop and I’m not sure anyone even noticed – forgot to take the shifter out of gear! I drove that car a few more times and then got my own a couple years later, which was a much different driving experience than the Mazda (a CJ-7 with a V8 and 3-speed – somewhat trickier to drive!)
I always taught people how to drive by the same method Paul mentioned, and I taught lots. I was never worried about messing the car up and confident in my “students” abilities. The only one that was a real disaster was a friend who was the biggest gearhead I knew at the time – letting him drive that same Jeep, which I thought he’d handle without any problems. Huge mistake – by the end of our ~1 mile trip home from the school parking lot, the transmission had separated itself from the bellhousing. I shit you not – he was that bad!!! I had to take over and nurse the poor CJ home in 2nd gear with the transmission partially disconnected from the engine.
I have to disagree about not using the parking brake on steep hills. Sure, you can accomplish it very smoothly with enough practice – but no one is perfect. No one ever gets it right 100% of the time. Why not do things the easier way? I commented on this in the other article, too, but I’ll mention it again here: I spent several years not even realizing that you could lock the back wheels and then take off on a hill. It just never occurred to me, and I got really good at them without it… but once I realized you could do that? Why the heck wouldn’t I do it every time?!
I may have driven a tractor before this, but I remember learning in my grandfather’s Subaru Brumby ute, including stalling a few times at first because it had quite a high bite point and I would get impatient slowly letting the clutch out as instructed (no mention of bite point!) with nothing happening, then rush the latter part and stall.
I think Paul’s method is spot on. I remember teaching my sister and despite protestations that she didn’t care or need to know how a car works, a basic explanation of what a clutch does ie bringing a stationary and spinning friction plate together helps I think. Having a basic idea of the how/why behind what is happening when you move the pedal has to assist.
I also got her to experience brake lock-up at low speed on a gravel road and then try to stop without locking, plus slalom the car a bit to feel it starting to slide. I think it is much better not to experience these things for the first time on a wet road in an emergency.
I’m currently teaching my teenager how to drive a stick shift. We have no automatics, so she has no choice in the matter; she needs to get comfortable with the stick shift before we let her out on the roads. We’re using my Honda Fit. Interestingly, she’s picked up the basic idea of the clutch friction point faster than anyone else I’ve seen learn to drive a stick shift. I’m wondering if it’s because she has no experience driving and just doesn’t know any other way!
A thing I suggest to people that I’ve never done but seems like a good idea is something like this:
If you want to teach someone to drive stick, don’t use a new car or a car you care about keeping. Find a ~$500 beater with a five-speed, buy it, use that as your instructional vehicle, and then, provided you haven’t wrapped it around a tree, sell it when you’re done. Generally, $500 cars don’t really depreciate any more as long as they’re functional, so your actual net cost is taxes, license fee (generally not a lot on a $500 car), and a few bucks of extra insurance for a month or two, which almost certainly adds up to less than the cost of a clutch job on a newer car. Even if the learner grenades the clutch or synchros or blows the engine and you end up junking the car or calling one of those “donate your old beater” places, your outlay is still probably less than a clutch job.
I learned by driving my daddy’s 47 Studebaker pickup around the pasture when I was ten.
I taught my youngins by showing them how it’s done while explaining it to them. Then I put them behind the wheel. Its cost me a couple of clutches (thanks Robbie and Karrie 🙂 ) and a transmission (thanks Debbie 🙂 ) but they all can drive a manual shift and have taught or are teaching their kids.
I taught myself to drive stick last summer on the ’75 Camaro project car I purchased. 3 speed with a straight 6. I took it around the block (side streets) quite a bit before I got brave enough to take it on the main road. I don’t drive it much (it is a project so it still needs work) but at least I feel good that I taught myself a valuable skill.
One of my favorite family stories is when my grandparents purchased a brand new ’78 VW Rabbit. My Dad was in college then and remembers Grandma coming home to say the new car would be at the dealer in a few weeks but she had one problem. To keep the cost down they ordered the basic model (only options AM/FM radio and a sunroof) with the 4 speed but she didn’t know how to drive stick. Dad had a ’72 Beetle at the time and he used that successfully to teach her to drive stick. She had no problems driving her new Rabbit and was still able to drive stick until age 70 when it became too hard on her left knee.
One of my sister’s old boyfriends let me learn on his old Mazda 808. I got the clutch pretty quickly, but ground the gears a few times getting the shifter down. My sister let me practice on her old 4-speed Civic, and that was pretty easy. A few years later I inherited my mom’s old Datsun 310 with a 4-speed and it was my daily driver for three years. I even taught an old girlfriend to drive stick on the Datsun, and she got it pretty quickly. I had a couple more vehicles (my ’84 Cavalier and ’92 Nissan King Cab), both with 5-speeds. I tried to teach my wife (a trucker’s daughter) to drive stick in the Nissan, but she didn’t (and still doesn’t) really have much interest in it. Our last car was automatic, and it’s a given that the cars we rent are automatics. I miss driving manual, and I still like to borrow a car with a stick once in a while just to keep myself in practice. If we ever have the space and money for two cars I’m going to make sure one has a stick.
My dad insisted I learn to drive manual during my driving lessons and I thought he was cruel as hell for doing that.
Obviously I was wrong because with the exception of a 81 Escort, all cars owned since are manual shift. I use the same method, empty parking lot, showing the friction point, explaining how the clutch works and lots of patience.
With that method I’ve taught my ex wife, sister and now my current girlfriend to drive stick and will soon teach my 13 year old, who can’t wait. My girlfriends daughter, not so much, but I’m working on it.:)
Taught my daughter how to drive in 2006 with my 1989 mazda b2600 4wd truck. we went out onto the seasonal use highways (logging trails, essentially) before she turned 16. put the truck in 4wd low range. max speed then was about 30 mph in 5th gear. your could pop the clutch in 1st and not stall the thing in 4wd and not get going very fast either. this made a great trainer for controlling the mass of a motor vehicle, and the concept of how to shift without the constant stall humiliation while learning the technique. soon we were able to get up to 3rd gear and speeds of 15mph. then transitioned to the paved approaches to seasonal use roads and switched to 2wd hi range to learn the clutch friction point “for real”. future rides, looked for small straight upgrades and practice starting on slopes in 2wd hi. by the time she turned 16 and was ready for permit test, she had a fair bit of beginner skills. we had ordered an 06 mini cooper around then. in 2.5 mos she was ready for road test and took and passed in the 5sp std MINI. from my experience in teaching her, i feel an 80s-90s Japanese sized 4wd compact truck with lo range in transfer case is about the perfect teaching vehicle to learn clutch technique. she is better and smoother with the shift and engine awareness than I am and has taught several friends and her husband how to drive std.
yeah, once they have some concept of the friction point, time spent on a slight upslope “catching” the car, holding it in place at moderate/low rpm on clutch and gas pedal only, then releasing and catching it again to hold it from rolling really reinforces the friction point familiarity. our section of upstate NY is really hilly, so this is an essential skill.
I taught myself in an 83 Mercury Lynx. I was 16 years old and had just bought the car…I learned to drive a manual on the way home. That was back in ’92. I taught my oldest daughter how to drive a stickshift about 4 years ago when she was 16. The clutch in my 96 Toyota Tacoma 4×4 had just begun to slip. We went to a deserted fairgrounds and put the truck in 4 low. She could pop the clutch and not stall the engine…from there she progressed to 2 high.
I first drove a manual transmission on a rental car in Athens (Greece, not Georgia). It wasn’t hard to learn and I haven’t lost the skill, due to occasional re-exposures to stick shifts over the decades since.
But I’d never consider trying to teach someone else how to do it…I don’t have the personality of a teacher…would probably stomp off and tell them to forget about it and get an automatic.
Never mind manual gearboxes; my wife insists on driving our automatic mercedes with her left foot permanently on the brake. Getttit off I say; to no avail.
My parents insisted that my younger sisters and I learned in a manual car, so the family cars were always manual. I learnt in 1989 in a 1985 Ford Sierra, my middle sister in 1991 in a 1985 Toyota Townace, and my youngest sister in 1995 in a 1990 Ford Telstar. The minute my youngest sister passed her practical licence test, my parents traded the Telstar on an auto Subaru Legacy and have owned (and loved) autos since.
My first drives were in the paddock on the family farm in 1988 in our MkV Ford Cortina, which was traded on the Sierra a week or two later. The Cortina had heavier controls but the traditionally lovely snickety-snick Ford gearbox; the Sierra was easier to drive, but the gait was too close so I frequently went from 2nd to 5th instead of 3rd.
My first car was a manual 1971 MkI Ford Escort, but I followed that with 3 successive Sierra autos and an auto Honda Accord – my work vehicles for all this time were manual though. In 2001 I bought my first Nissan Laurel, a ’92 diesel which was manual. I was helping out a Church youth group as a leader at that time, and as most families drove autos, I ended up teaching several of the young guys to drive in the Laurel. Ironically it was an ex-driving school car from Japan, and had a spotlight to shine on the driver’s footwell, a second rear-view mirror (which I removed as it looked dorky) mounted where the passenger side sunvisor should be, and extra footrests on the passenger side. Oh, and hockey stick mirrors way down the end of the front guards. Having driven for a living for several years, I’m pretty patient and unflappable when it comes to driving, so I really enjoyed teaching them all. I found the best way to teach them to master the manual was to tailor the lessons to the person. For example, for a pianist I could compare the pedal action to those on a piano. Great fun!
I sold my last manual car, my R33 Nissan Skyline, 4 years ago. Wish I hadn’t, as flinging it around winding back roads was such a delight. But you never forget – the Transit motor home I had in the UK last year was manual, and I loved driving it! There’s nothing quite as satisfying as learning a car’s clutch/gearbox and working in unison with them – it’s almost like a symbiotic relationship when you get it right!
I so agree with you Scott.. 🙂 …there is nothing like chucking a manual rear drive high-powered car around on our back country roads… particularly if it’s bent eight or a decent six… you know the State Highway from Bombay to Thames? (yuk!..boring AND DANGEROUS!!) well.. i instead used to rip along the winding coastal road via Clevedon Kawakawa Orere Kaiaua Miranda every time i could) now THAT one is a FUN drive to Thames, don’t you agree?? (no cops) (a few nice throttle openable Front Miranda Road 200kmph plus straights)
Snap my friend! I convey my own local church folk around the Thames-Paeroa-Waihi-Te Aroha area in an old Estima camper i picked-up off TradeMe for tuppence hap-penny complete with a healthy 3CT/AWD drivetrain 🙂
My Uncle sent me to the auto parts store in a VW Station Wagon, told me, ‘You’ll know how to drive a clutch buy the time you get back! He was right it was easy to drive a clutch in the VW Type 3 Squareback.
Nice article, Paul Niedermeyer, and in the article you described a very good technique for teaching. I wish my driving instructor had taught me some more about mastering the clutch before sending me out into traffic (driving students in Europe have it hard – quite often, instructors fail to really teach them how to skillfully operate the transmission, and then they have to go out into traffic, too many new things at once).
As for your last paragraph on starting uphill, however, I think using handbrake is a good idea if you want smooth starts and not wear out your clutch too soon. On European cars, handbrake lever is between the seats, and (at least for me) it’s much easier to coordinate left foot (clutch), right foot (gas) and right hand (handbrake), than to smoothly transition the right foot from brake pedal to gas…
As Roger put it in the first post, this is a basic skill here and was just something I learned from my driving instructor along with the rest of driving.
My memory blurs the whole experience together but I’m pretty sure I spent some of the first couple of lessons learning to feel the clutch, often with the handbrake on iirc – just engaging and feeling it start to pull then disengaging. By the middle of my second lesson it wasn’t something I had to think about any more.
A couple of years ago my good friend Hamish, who emigrated here from Canada, was studying for his UK driving test. He was really struggling with getting the hang of “stickshift”.
He was especially frustrated by what he called the “stoopidfukenclutch” on his partner’s VW Polo when out practicing in between lessons. Listening to him talk it was clear he’d just about mastered the clutch on his instructor’s car, but hadn’t learned to feel for the bite point, so couldn’t adapt to different manual cars. Without that context though from his perspective the Polo’s transmission was just this baffling, frustrating barrier to driving. People telling him it was a thing you’d learn to feel wasn’t helping either – it’s pretty vague advice after all.
A few months later with the Polo’s transmission still a baffling mystery to him, they decided to get a new car together and plumped for a Suzuki SX4. A manual (Autos are expensive and relatively rare here).
Hame was still very unsure of manual transmissions, and specifically worried he wouldn’t get the hang of their new Suzuki. He asked me (as his car-nut friend) for help. Since they live in Wick I couldn’t exactly pop over (he’s a really good friend, but it’s a 14 hour round trip!) so I sat down and thought about this thing I’d been doing instinctively for almost two decades so I could distill it into an email:
A few months later he passed his test and these days happily drives all over Caithness, shifting like a pro, and even enjoying it! It really is easy once you know how.
For years my Dad only bought manual transmission cars, but by the time I was ready to begin driving Mom had convinced him to buy automatics (she could shift fine, but detested it).
My first time driving a stick a stick was the summer I was 16 at the peach orchard where I worked. There was an ancient pickup that had been retrofitted with a homemade platform in place of the bed, and one of the foremen told me to “move that truck over there”. Once the starter button on the floor was pointed out to me (I had never seen such a thing), I did okay.
The second time was in my senior year of high school when a friend asked if I wanted to drive his dad’s VW Beetle (don’t know if Dad was aware of this). The Beetle was pretty easy to drive, so I was able to get it going and run through the gears around our town pretty easily, pretty much entirely self-taught.
Then in 79 when I bought the first car I chose (as opposed to getting a family hand-me-down), I bought a 79 Mustang turbo 4 speed. My first experience with the car was driving it home in rush-hour traffic, which I managed to do without stalling once (this was about 8 years after the experience with the VW, but as they say once you’ve learned how you never forget).
I only gave up on sticks in 2000 because the arthritis in my left knee made crawling down the Southfield freeway during ruch hour a painful experience. I’m thinking that, now that I’m retired and I can avoid rush hour, my next car should have a stick.
I learned in the arcade, no kidding. Dad used to be a real car guy (Impala, Isetta, Amazon, Dart, Beetle in that order), but by the time my brother and I came along, it was snoozeville… Aspen wagon or Camaro Berlinetta. But we’d go to the drag races or the fancy new arcades now and then.
Growing up with Turbo and Pole Position grounded the love of driving for me. In ’86, OutRun released and really tugged at the heartstrings – the road trip game with changing scenery, music, a passenger… but in 1989, it was Atari’s “Hard Drivin'” that actually taught me how to drive stick. A simulation with a true 4-speed and 3 pedals. Selecting manual mode meant that the clutch even had to be in to start the game.
I regularly snuck the old Berlinetta out since I was about 12, but had never driven an actual manual transmission car in my life, only that game. In 1996, at 18, I picked out my first car (a manual ’83 Volvo 245 Turbo that I still think about weekly), and wound up driving it 70 miles home without a single stall or mis-shift. Dad couldn’t believe it.
I wish today’s console games had better 3-pedal support. It almost seems like the car market’s following the game market as paddle shifters become the only option even on sporty cars like the Alfa 4C.
OutRun! God I’ve not thought of that in years. Awesome game. Good point too – games then did have better manual representation than they do now. Maybe Rockstar could make a GTA Scotland and everything could be manual 😀
I taught myself.
I picked up an article about driving a stick then when I felt I had it down in my mind, went to the Volkswagen dealer in town and took a Diesel Rabbit out for a test drive.
The Diesel Rabbit is a nice teacher. Put it in first, gently release the clutch and it starts rolling very smoothly all by itself, without touching the gas pedal. Well, a diesel pedal in this case. Only worked of course when the engine was at its normal operating temperature.
That’s what I remember from the VW Golf Mk1 diesel I had for taking the driving lessons and for passing the driving test.
Ditto a manual 4.0 HO XJ Cherokee. Actually, you don’t even have to release it gently….
Dad taught me the basics about operating a car with a stick, but when I was 14, he bought his 1960 Impala which had a 283 Powerglide. That was in 1965.
In 1968, I really wanted to learn to drive a stick, but I didn’t own a car as yet, but I planned on buying a friend’s 1952 Chevy, which was a stick. My friend’s dad’s main car was a 1966 Bel-Air 4 door sedan – it was a stick as well. Well, he drove over one evening in the Bel-Air and gave me a chance!
In our neighborhood there wasn’t much traffic, especially in the evening, and I slowly gained a feel for the coordination necessary – we had mild hills, too!
Well, once you get the hang of it, there’s no going back! Driving a stick was fun!
I bought that 1952 Chevy that August, and some time later, I bought a 1961 Bel-Air, also a stick.
Fun, fun, fun.
One day one of my best friends taught me in a parking lot with his Ford Ranger 5-speed. I did pretty well, but haven’t driven a manual since then. I’m probably a little rusty now.
I taught myself on my Dad’s then new Ford Escort. I’d seen other people doing it, and was able to pick it up pretty quickly. I then taught my brother. After having him tool around the neighborhood, he felt pretty comfortable. He felt so comfortable with it that he drove the car to his buddy’s house that evening. Upon leaving, sometime after midnight, he realized there was one thing we hadn’t gone over–starting on a hill. His friend lived on a steep hill, and he couldn’t get the car started from the curb in front of the house.
They had to wake his friend’s father up, who cursed at him as he got dressed, went outside, and executed a u turn in front of the house. Traumatized, my brother drove the car home and, even 30 years later, has never driven a stick again.
Although my father was going to teach me, I taught myself. Age 18 (1968), so of course I knew the method of driving a stick. I just hadn’t driven one yet. Then dad got me my graduation gift, a 1937 Buick Special two door sedan. The plan was that he was going to teach me that coming weekend. Of course, I couldn’t wait. That Buick had the most forgiving and easy clutch ever made, with a very progressive take-up point, so within five minutes (and no stalling) I had it figured out.
Motorcycle clutches were learned in the parking lot of the Erie Kawasaki dealer as I picked up my first bike, a 1975 G3-SS (100cc two-stroke street). Stalled it six times before I finally wobbled out the driveway, but by the time I’d gotten home (15 miles away) I had the basics figured out.
My late wife, Patti, was the odd duck. She could handle a motorcycle (hand) clutch halfway competently, but was a complete loss with an automobile (foot) clutch. Ended up driving automatics all her life.
I’m still one of those hard cases who doesn’t like to look at a new car unless its got a manual.
I’m the guy who posted the “handbrake” comment in the Pontiac GP writeup so I guess I should give my background.
I guess the first manual transmission I drove was a tractor also, but more of a lawn tractor than a regular large tractor. I had to learn to cut our lawn (we had a pretty big yard, and it was hilly) but being allowed to drive anything was a big deal for a car crazy young guy I was at the time.
My first car was a ’72 Fiat 128, with (of course) a manual transmission. It wasn’t the car I learned to drive on, but was the first car I drove with manual transmission (my Dad had a Renault R10 with manual but traded it in for an automatic car the year I was learning to drive, and I never got to drive the R10). The Fiat 128 wasn’t too hard to learn on, but it met its demise when one of the gears in the transmission came off the spindle and trashed the transaxle, and it would be too expensive to fix (and the car was so rusty it wasn’t worth it). The Fiat had a manual choke too, and burned premium gas (but the tank I think was all of 7 gallons, so even though it got good mileage it still had to be filled up quite often.
My Dad and Mother both learned to drive manual (my Dad’s first (Ford) and second (Plymouth) cars were manuals)…but my Mom learned on a ’51 Chrysler Windsor with semi-automatic transmission. She later drove my Father’s cars of course, but to this day has never been completely comfortable with a manual. I had to give her a refresher on my GTI when she was travelling to eastern Europe with my Uncle, she wanted to make sure she could back him up (my Uncle for some reason has a tendency to have weird things happen to him when he travels, sometimes leaving him incapacitated such that he might not be able to drive). I had 3 sisters, and only one learned to drive manual; I tried to teach my youngest sister (I wanted to give her my ’78 Scirocco) but she never really learned, I think its lack of air conditioning and that she really preferred Automatic gave her disincentive to learn to drive manual.
I’ve owned nothing but manuals since I bought the Scirocco in 1981…but I think I will eventually go automatic partly because it is getting so hard to find manual cars, but also I’ve noted some times when I’ve had leg or knee problems, having to press the clutch (as innocuous as that seems) is a bigger deal when you’re not feeling well, and to only have one car with manual transmission makes it mandatory to drive it even on such occasions. I think I learned a lesson 20 years ago when I broke my collarbone in a bicycle accident and had to drive my (non-power steering) GTI with 60 series tires …the car wasn’t too heavy, but the steering was tough enough to drive when incapacitated (I had a sling on for several weeks). That plus the manual transmission was a handful.
I think the thing I’ll really miss when I go to automatics is the engine braking…I wish automatics would slow down like manuals when you let off the gas…I don’t like having to use the brake pedal to slow down all the time.
Right after I got my license in 1964 my dad had me haul some trash to the dump. I told him I couldn’t drive a stick. He told me that I would be an expert by the time I got back. He was close to right.
I got a good laugh a few years ago when a former classmate of my youngest daughter told me that when they were in school he was amazed that she drove a stick shift Ranger pickup. He said she told him ” It’s not a real truck if the gearshift doesn’t come out of the floor”.
Hey now… it can be a real truck if the column has an “H” pattern!! LOL
True. Of course she wasn’t old enough to drive the ’73 Ranchero 302 three on the tree I had at one time. Odd truck. It had lower body paint stripe and factory Magnum 500 wheels and AM radio and nothing else. I would have liked to have been able to ask the original owner about that. I finally put a Hurst shifter in it it when the column linkage broke.
My daughter will learn on my 72 F-100 Three on the Tree!!!
My wife never learned. My Father-In-Law told me he certainly wasn’t going to teach her in his 65 Vette!
Sadly, motorcycle manufactures are putting non-shifting trannys on bikes more and more. I really don’t get that at all… shifting is part of the fun!
My parents always had automatics – so it was up to me to learn on my own. Luckily, I worked summers with the town’s recreation department doing maintenance. Two of the three trucks had manual transmissions (this was in the late 70’s – early 80’s). One was an older Ford mason dump – that had the most forgiving clutch. I would putter around in that thing every chance I got until I mastered it.
However – I never got good at backing up with a trailer attached! But that’s another story.
Paul’s method is indeed the way to do it-both in terms of working memory/concentration (without the throttle, you have one less thing to think about) and in terms of enhanced opportunity to get the “feel” of the clutch and the available torque of the engine. I was fortunate enough to have all the advantages: starting out on a tractor, in a big open yard, with a hand clutch (John Deere Model 60), that was pretty much designed for inching forward and back, then going to a foot clutch (Ford Model 8N, Farmall H)-all with hand throttles for which you set the speed (just a little above idle was best) so that you only had to concentrate on the clutch and brake. Then automobile lessons, in the 62 Bel Air with Powerglide and the 65 C-10 with three speed on the column, in the hay field in between cuttings and out on the gravel roads with no traffic. The biggest surprise was the lack of engine braking with the automatic transmission-what, you have to use the brakes to slow this thing down? And then the relative lack of clutch feel on the truck. In my experience, farm/industrial vehicles have more heavy duty drive trains, so the clutches engage much more directly and positively, with a much more direct “feel.” But that also means that many of them are much heavier, with heavier return springs. So you find yourself a little bitty old tractor, or a little old pickup truck, and an empty field/parking lot/street and about anyone can learn this thing. Mastering a foot clutch in an automobile is the next best thing to finally staying upright on your bicycle without the training wheels.
All my clutch friction point learning was done by hand! A John Deere “A” starting in first grade, and a Sears Puch 50 motorcycle in 8th grade. Most impressively the first manual transmission with foot clutch driven was a friends 440 six pack 1970 Road Runner when I was a junior in high school! My friend commented on my smooth shifting, it was the very first time and with a piston grip shifter no less. I don’t think that thing could be stalled.
My first car was a manual. It was just my mother and I living in our house at the time, and she couldn’t drive a stick. I insisted that my first car be a manual. One of my friends knew how to drive one and he gave me about an hour’s worth of instruction in a parking lot. After that, I just backed it out of my driveway repeatedly until I got used to the feel of it. That turned into a few trips around the block, and then around town. Within a few days, I took my mother on a day trip to the next province over.
While we sold our most recent manual car about 8 months ago, my kids already know they will be learning to drive a stick, and they actually want to.
Lots of replies about their own memories about learning to drive a stick, but to answer your question Paul, it’s simple. Kids like to learn and if you cart them around in a car with a manual, they “get” it just by watching. It’s a coordination of hands and feet and learning that friction point in the clutch. Putting the car in neutral and feeling the clutch is the first part. We let our 15 y/o start in the back forty in the same car we brought her home in from the hospital; an ’83 Mazda GLC 5 speed. Took her a whole day to become proficient. She is now (15 years later) the proud owner of a Porsche 944 – 5 speed of course! And oh, BTW, she got a great deal on her Toyota DD because it was a 5 speed and no other buyers could handle it. The dealer was thrilled to unload it.
I learned in our 82 Subaru GL, and was a bit surprised later to find that not all cars had the “hill holder” feature.
I’ve taught a few people to drive standard, and they always stare at the gear lever, which is the easy part. You have to tell them “watch my feet” and show them how the engagement point works.
My kids will learn to drive standard in our 63 VW. I’ve got 2 years to get it on the road before DerekD turns 16, at the rate I’m going I just might make it…
Believe it or not, in 1983, my high school driver’s ed offered you a choice of manual or automatic transmission. And the manual trans choice was 2x the fun – Mitsubishi Cordia twin-stick!
I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit that I didn’t learn to drive a stick until I was almost 19. Dad worked at a used car lot, and one night brought home a teal green 1992 Pontiac Sunbird coupe with an anemic 2.0L four-banger connected to a 5-speed.
He and I took the Sunbird to a nearby school parking lot so I could get a feel for the clutch, before he turned me loose on Tramway Blvd to figure out upshifts and – especially – hills for myself.
“That’s the way my father taught me,” he said. “Sink or swim.”
I managed to get the car home without embarrassing myself too badly, but truly I didn’t get comfortable with a manual transmission until I bought a 5-speed Accord less than a year later. THAT was my trial by fire car, though it’s worth noting that it still had its original clutch at 93,000 miles when I traded it for a 1994 Saturn SL2 “Homecoming” car, also a stick.
Of the 12 cars I’ve owned, four have been manuals, including my current Toy(ota MR2 Spyder.) But I much prefer an automatic in my daily driver.
My dad taught me how to drive in his 1961 Mercedes 190Db, with its indestructible but wretchedly underpowered Diesel and a four-speed stick on the column. I went back and forth, back and forth, over and over again in the yard, before we ever went out on the street, and I learned how to make the underpowered beast keep up in traffic. That was over forty years ago. After that I drove a 1941 Chevy (better pickup than the Mercedes!), a 1961 Dodge Lancer (with a sloppy three-on-the-floor), a 1977 Honda Accord (nice car, except that it turned into an oil burner–the seeds for that were planted before I bought it), and finally a 1984 Mazda 626. But in between there were automatics–my favorite was the 1970 Torino Brougham, with its Cruise-o-matic. After the Mazda, we’ve had nothing but automatics. If the need arose, we could both drive stick shifts again, but we have no desire to.
I learned to drive stick in a couple of different vehicles. The best for learning, in my opinion, is an old Ford or Chevy farm pickup. The clutch and gears seem a lot more forgiving of initial error. Downside is that sometimes it feels like you are trying to find the gears when you shift and the stick travel is quite a bit longer.
The other car I learned on were an old Honda Civic with damn near 200K on it. I got proficient on dad’s Mitsubishi Eclipse, but driving that thing felt almost like driving an automatic compared to the old F-150 or the Honda.
I am very glad I had those cars around at the time I was learning how to drive. Nothing takes the pressure off of learning when you are driving something you really can’t hurt or do much damage to.
These days, nothing I am interested in comes with a manual. Big and Broughamy cruisers don’t do stick. I don’t see many (if any) trucks or SUVs that do manual, and the paddle shifter things do not count.
I came from a family of manual drivers so all 3 of us got our first shot on a early 80’s Datsun 210. I don’t recall how my father taught me but I do remember the part I struggled with was shifting and turning at the same time … I would wait until I was done turning before making the shift. It took a bit to get comfortable with that. My wife also drove manuals from the start and her car is always a stick (currently a Volvo C30) even if most of the time I’m the one chauffeuring her around.
When I got my license at the end of 1969 automatics were showing up in everything big time. Naturally driver’s training used automatics. I took possession of my father’s 68 Cougar right after getting my license and being my father’s it was an auto.
Now when he got a 73 911E I knew I had to learn how to drive a stick. I remember learning the basics on a friend’s 1972 Mercury Capri. Transferring those skills to the 911 was a whole other ballgame. Nonetheless, the 70’s stayed automatic since all my company cars were that. When I actually bought my first car in 1980 it was a stick and that is all I use for my daily driver’s today. They aren’t trouble in traffic if you’re skilled and they aren’t trouble mechanically like autos can be.
My girlfriend’s mother took my girlfriend and I for a driving lesson in a Bronco II with a particularly grabby clutch and huge throws. That gave me my first taste of driving a manual.
Then when I went for my first car, I found a manual 1993 Escort. I told the guy “yeah, sure i can handle a manual”, even though I had never driven one outside of a parking lot. He took me to the other side of Harrisburg to the main lot and told me to drive it back to Colonial Park to do the paperwork. That was my test drive, I-83 mid-day, never having driven one on the highway.
It was mine 2 hours later.
I always longed for another manual, and last year I bought one, a 2002 Accord. Now I have to teach my wife. After a few lessons I’ve decided that she’s not very good and not likely to ever be good, but if she can get from place to place in emergencies that’ll be good enough. When I started to teach her I told her to touch nothing but the clutch so that she could learn the engagement point. She did better with that than she did when she started to engage the gas. I can’t figure out why.
Learned to drive on a 66 VW. I used to watch my parents shift and look at how they worked the clutch and gas pedal. My dad would let me drive it on back roads out in Palmdale and Lancaster when they were empty. He got pissed and accused me of sneaking out with the car since I worked the clutch and shifter so well. Who, me? Perish the thought. I taught 2 nieces to drive a stick, one already had a driver license. Started off by having her shift as I called out the gears as I drove. Explained how I worked the clutch and gas as she shifted. I got her a parts driver job at the dealership I worked at, the truck was an 85 S10 stripper 4 speed stick. It was the crappiest driving, hardest to shift thrashed out truck I have ever seen. I borrowed it for the weekend and let her abuse the poor thing, better that truck then my Rabbit. I knew if she could shift that thing, she could work any stick shift. We drove all over LA that weekend, and she was shifting and working the clutch perfectly by Sunday night, and started work Monday. My other niece was 15 and as we drove up from California to Washington I first had her shift for me, and then let her drive the Jetta on the long straight low traffic sections of I-5. She eventually got the hang of it, she had never driven before. Both nieces to this day own stick shift cars. I tried to teach the first niece’s daughter to learn a stick, we got as far as letting her shift. She did OK at that, but took drivers school which of course are automatic only, and she decided she will drive auto only. That works for me since all the cars in the family are stick. Have a nephew who is 21 and doesn’t have a license and doesn’t seem to want one.
My first stick shift experience was on a Ford tractor in Israel. After that my parents taught me to drive our 77 Accord which was my main transport in high school.
As for teaching others, I did give a girl in my college dorm one lesson my 78 Scirocco in a parking lot, and I taught my wife to be to drive stick. My wife had the advantage of learning clutch control on motorcycle a few months before starting on my mom’s Mazda Protege, where I once dropped her in the deep end by directing her from the rest are parking lot right onto I-95. After that she graduated to my Jetta and her own 1985 Ford Ranger, although her legs were really too short to comfortably drive it so she has reverted to slushboxes.
I must be the only guy here to admit to having never mastered a manual transmission, nor to have ever driven one any farther than down a street and around a corner. The only instruction I ever got was in my high school driver training course in 1963, in the big Aetna-sponsored trailer with those little simulated driver’s pods lined up in rows while you watched a big screen at the end of the trailer. Our actual learner car provided by Aetna was a ’57 Ford Custom beater with an automatic. Manual transmissions had ceased to be in any of our family cars, or any of our extended family cars, after about 1955. By the time I got my driver’s license, I was learning and practicing on my dad’s ’61 Falcon and mom’s new ’63 Mercury, both with automatics. And to this day, I have had automatics in all of my own cars. There was always something about manipulating a stick shift in dense L.A. traffic that unnerved me, so I avoided them like the plague even in later years when friends had them. Never felt particularly like I had missed anything, although reading all these posts, maybe so.
What you’re missing is total immersion with the car. You have to feel the engagement, you have to listen to the engine, and you have to have an idea of your car’s performance to ensure you’re always in the right gear at the right time.
To me an automatic has a go pedal and a stop pedal. It’s an appliance. A manual is something that engages me, keeps me thinking ahead. It becomes an automatic reflex, sure, but you’re never more aware of what you’re missing until you switch to an automatic from a manual. Your feet and hands are restless, you become a clod on the brakes because you can’t use engine braking, and you just sit there with your hands in your lap. You find yourself stabbing at the floor for a pedal that isn’t there. You keep looking to shift, only to find that the transmission shifted at the “wrong” time. It drives you crazy.
It’s not for everybody, I admit. For some people cars ARE nothing more than appliances, a way to get from Point A to Point B. But I like to drive my car, I like to put it in 3rd and take a sweeper without touching the brakes, I like to downshift just to hear the engine sing. My wife doesn’t have my passion, so she has an automatic. Strangely, though, she asks me if she can drive my car fairly often. It seems a manual is arousing her passion as well.
I learned to drive in 1980. I desperately wanted to learn how to use a clutch, but neither my parents nor anyone I knew owned such a car!
Fortunately, shortly after I got my license, an older cousin bought a 1974 Capri 2800 and he was willing to teach me. I haven’t willingly bought a car without a clutch since.
Like the other British posters here, I had to learn manual straight away – I remember working with a Northern Irish guy in Australia and he was horrified when I explained that in the US you don’t have to take your test in a manual. “But that’s driving! That’s the hard part! Driving an auto’s just steering!”
I remember the looks on my American in-laws faces when I explained to them that my mother and father (aged 59 and 63) had never in their lives driven an automatic and were intimidated at the prospect of doing so. “I don’t know how you drive one of those!”. “It moves even when you’re not pressing the accelerator!”.
These are people who held out for as long as possible to avoid cars with “hi-tech” features such as electric windows and radio cassettes.
Wow, quite the conversation going.
I think the best way to learn clutch is to find a friend with an old Beetle. I always thought they were about impossible to stall in first gear. Although come to think of it, I’ve seen a few knuckleheads do so…
One time I did some brake work on a friends VW bug Auto Stick. It had a brake pedal that was wider then the stick shift. It could be driven like a 3 speed if you lifted the accelerator pedal at every gear change. This worked well until I was going from second to third and my clutch foot automatically hit the edge of the brake pedal and locked up the brakes. The guy behind me as he threw his Datsun pickup into the right lane and sailed past me was not impressed or happy.
My dad taught me to drive stick shift. And my grand dad taught me on a riding mower which is a bit different of course. This is quickly becoming a lost art, as fewer and fewer cars are going to be sold with manual transmissions as they don’t get as good fuel economy as some of the newer types of automatics like CVT.
I was determined to learn to drive one, and thus learned to do it the hard way: In 1984, at the age of 20, I walked into a dealership and bought a new car with a manual transmission.
I knew at that point there was no looking back, unless I was willing to rely on others for transportation, use public transit, or be willing to take a severe haircut by trading in a new car immediately after signing the paperwork.
After an extended test drive with a trusted salesman (a family friend) who swore he could teach me to drive a stick, I went on to drive that car for four years, and over 50,000 trouble-free miles. So perhaps I got lucky, because I somehow managed to learn without any apparent damage to the transmission or clutch.
Like many of you, I learned to drive a stickshift in a parking lot. In fact, I may have learned on some of your cars!
One of my favorite jobs when I was in high school was working as a parking lot valet attendant at various local restaurants. When I was hired and I admitted to my ignorance of 3-pedal driving, the boss told the crew chief to keep an eye out for any cars with manual transmissions. I got my lessons while the customers were enjoying their dinners.
After my first summer I was quite skilled at driving a stick, except that my expertise was pretty much limited to first gear and reverse.
Yes, my Dad taught me (at the tender age of 11) to drive stick in a 69 ford F100, using the technique that Paul so aptly described, but he neglected to tell me one thing. Apparently, one needs to put in the clutch while trying to stop. (The truck was on a downhill slope heading toward some nice soft Poplar trees) Needless to say, I was standing on the brake pedal when the truck hit the trees and stalled.
To his credit, he wouldn’t let me out of the truck, but had me back it off, and try again.
25 years and 9 manual transmission cars later, I’m using the church parking lot to teach my 16 year old son the skills, but I’ve never forgotten to tell him to put in the clutch when coming to a stop..
Bribery. That’s how I learned. My parents promised I’d get my mom’s hand-me-down ’74 Pinto if I learned how to drive stick. What 16yr old could resist that?
And BTW, took my test an my dad’s 6 month old ’79 AMC Spirit, with a stick of course 😀 .
I was 17 when I found a 1987 BMW 325i at an impound lot for $1,000. The speedometer and odometer stopped working at 221,000 miles. Who knows how many years went by after it stopped counting miles. The only stuff that worked was the engine, transmission and 1 power window.
I had my mom test drive the car with me riding shotgun. She explained everything she was doing. We determined that it was good enough to get me to and from high school and my minimum wage job, so I bought the car.
She asked me how I was going to get it home. I said to her that I would take her car and she would drive the BMW. Her response, “Nope, you need to learn somehow.”
The impound lot did not do any licensing and the DMV had already closed for the evening. So, I had the added stress of driving without a license plate and my mom tailgating me close enough for no-one to notice. This was in Florida.
Several years and a Saab or 2 later, I went to grad school at Ohio University. Anyone familiar with OU will know that there are hills EVERYWHERE. My 1992 Saab 900 had a parking brake that wouldn’t stay in adjustment long enough to be effective on a hill. I learned the friction point trick very quickly.
My dad taught me just like Paul described: About an hour and a half in an empty parking lot to get used to the friction point. The next day he taught me how to shift gears. While I was pretty smooth and took to it quickly, he still rode shotgun with me for like a week. Only real issue I had was starting off on a slight incline in the rain and spinning tires all thru the intersection right in front of a cop! My dad tried to shrink down to half his size but Barney Fife must’ve been preoccupied. This was on the ’84 Dodge Power Ram with granny gear first. Having a stump pulling first gear helps you get the feel of the clutch for sure.
I used a similar technique with one of my ex g/f’s. I had my ’95 4 banger Wrangler at the time, so I took her on a gravel lot and threw it into 4-low. No stalling that, and the gravel meant even if she dumped the clutch with lots of gas, it wouldn’t stress the driveline. She eventually got the hang of it and promptly forgot once she got another slushbox car.
The first time I ever tried to teach someone was my middle sister…who can barely be trusted to push a shopping cart. At the time, I had a crappy ’87 ford ranger that was a stopgap after I wiped out one of my Jeeps. Even as a lightweight 2wd with dinky tires, the 2.9L (no torque for you!) V6 and my sis’ vehicular challenged status insured a total fail. She never gave it another go.
My trick is to have the student remove their left shoe when learning the friction point. There is much more feel available without the sole in the way. If you are lucky enough to still have a cable operated throttle, then the right shoe can come off too. That allows the right foot to feel the engine speed.
Learned to drive standard on a Formula Dodge 2000 when I was 18. I worked for a nationally known racing/driving school at a well-known road circuit in northern CT.
No syncros, just a modified VW 4 spd dog box behind a Dodge 2.0L. Definitely the “mechanical advantage”…
After stalling about 23 times in the paddock, the foreman yelled out to me: “Think of it like a see-saw!”
Never stalled since….that was over 10 years ago.
My dad taught me when I was 12 on his 320i in an empty suburban office park in Atlanta. He taught me about the friction point and just had me practice (and, of course, fail) a lot. Easing the clutch out, gear changes, coming to stop, etc. My sister learned later on that car’s replacement (another 320i), which we both drove in high school. When I first got my permit I was, granted, rather afraid of starting off on hills (of which there were plenty) but learned the right technique soon enough. My sister won’t buy a car with an automatic, and I own one only because I quasi-inherited it (it was wa too good a deal to pass up.) My aunt in Colombia, who drove nothing but manuals her whole life, was (to me, amusingly) as befuddled by her first time with an automatic (on a trip to the US in her 50s) as most people who had never used one would be with a manual.
I wanted to learn when I was a teenager, but my folks didn’t have a stickshift car at the time, so I got lessons from my sister, who had a Toyota pickup, and later from an employer who wanted me to make deliveries in their Mazda GLC. I didn’t get enough time with either to really learn it well enough to be confident. Years later, I still wanted to learn, and so I bit the bullet and bought a brand new 1995 Honda Civic EX sedan, with the 5-speed stick (hey, it was actually cheaper than the automatic). I got a lesson from the salesman in a sloped parking garage, and I was off on my way in the brand new car. It took me about a month to get really comfortable with that car, but since it was my only car I had no choice. Except for occasionally driving my partner’s BMW 325, I haven’t had another stick until recently, and it’s another Honda: a 1986 Prelude with 46,000 miles on it. I was specifically looking for the 5-speed model, and I love it. I still feel like my skills could be better, though. I do live on a steep hill, and I’ve resorted to using the handbrake a few times just because I don’t want to risk damaging this rather pristine 28-year old Honda! But your comments inspire me to tune in my skills better. One thing’s for sure, a Honda is definitely more forgiving than a BMW (except maybe for reverse, which always seems to be sort of odd-feeling in a Honda, way off to the right.) I love driving the Prelude so much that I’m really wishing my everyday car was a stick.