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.
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.