Sticking it to manual transmission

Does anyone drive a stick shift anymore?

I don’t. Haven’t since December 20, 1984. That was the day a chiropractor misread my X-rays and snapped my left knee back into place, thinking he was correcting a dislocation. It swelled up like a boiled ham and never went down. Turns out it was bone cancer, which is a story for another article. The point is, even after a leg-saving surgery months later, I could never physically use a car’s clutch pedal again.

It’s hard to forget the significance of that day because it was the first where I felt like I’d finally mastered a manual transmission. I had only turned sixteen two months before, and when my parents gifted me a hand-me-down Toyota with a stick shift, I had to learn to drive it if I wanted to get anywhere. My father took me to an empty parking lot behind his office building and endured a week’s worth of shakes, stops, and stalls until I figured it out. I doubt there’s a theme park that could offer a similar experience.

Once I was competent enough to hit the roads on my own, each trip offered its own challenges. Red lights were the simplest places to make a mistake and have people honking at me while I re-started the car. Hills were treacherous but not as tricky as traffic jams on the freeway. I eventually reached that December day when I was shifting like a superhero. I sang along with the radio as I sailed down city streets. Still, I couldn’t help wonder why anyone would put themselves through the inconvenience of shifting when they can have the car handle those duties for them.

I still feel this way today.

Do we need manual transmissions at all? We’ve evolved to the point where people now choose to ride in luxury vehicles that reduce their responsibilities to closing the car door and putting on a seatbelt. Why on earth would anyone want to be shifting gears when they don’t even have to accelerate, decelerate, or steer the car? Using body parts like hands or feet to drive has been rendered inconvenient; people need their hands, for example, to apply makeup or dig a burger out of their takeout bag.

Fortunately, the automotive industry agrees with me. According to data from the car sales website Edmunds.com, just 41 of the 327 new car models sold in the United States in 2020 were offered with manual transmissions. That’s 13%. A dying feature if there ever was one.

Still, there are plenty of people who insist that if you’re not shifting gears when behind the wheel, you’re not really driving. My guess is, none of those people own Tesla stock. But auto manufacturers have to appeal to all customers, so beyond that 13%, they’ve also found a way to give drivers the option of a manual transmission, even in cars with no true stick shift. I have this feature in my Mazda 6. I’m sure I paid extra for it.

The first time I test drove the car, the salesman made it sound like a big deal. It wasn’t enough that I could switch the car into “Sport” mode and see no tangible effect. Now, while in Drive, I could slide the gear lever toward me to enter manual mode and first gear. To shift into second and beyond, I only had to flick the knob toward me and back, like an old Atari joystick. It was easy, it was rhythmic, and I’ll admit, it seemed cool. The thought of occasionally slipping into manual and feeling like that 16-year-old again had a nostalgic appeal. It wasn’t the reason I bought the car (I wanted to show off that I had a “Sport” mode), but it didn’t hurt.

I left the lot and made it the first thing I tried - after setting my radio stations. I zipped into second gear, then third, using the engine’s strain to determine when to shift. But after several minutes, I found it to be a chore, one more thing I’d have to pay attention to. I gave up on it after six blocks.

Since then, the only time I’ve ever been in manual mode is when my dog comes for a ride. As she scuttles from the passenger seat to my lap, she often hits the gear handle and inadvertently takes me out of automatic. It’s when I’m up to fifty miles per hour and my engine sounds like a warped hairdryer that I realize what happened.

Here’s the bottom line: it’s 2021. We live in a world where Siri or Alexa can answer any question, Roombas can vacuum our floors, and we can order and receive almost any product without getting up from our couch or putting pants on. We certainly don’t need to be shifting gears while driving. Heck, we don’t even need to be driving at all.

It’s time for the stick shift to settle onto a shelf in the Outdated Items Hall of Fame, joining the ranks of the typewriter, 8-track tape player, floppy disk, and encyclopedia. There’s always a place for nostalgia, but who really needs it when you have Sport mode.