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I've had so far eight vehicles and three of them have been stardard shift.
News, Check The Manual (Transmission): Stick Shift Cars Going Away.
Call it a love affair that began prenatally. I was born mere hours after my mom finished helping my dad install a Hurst floor shifter in his ’55 Chevy. Later, I remember at the age of four asking Dad why he pushed on the pedal every time he moved the lever between the bucket seats of our ’68 VW dune buggy. “That’s the clutch,” he told me. “I have to do that every time I want to change gears with the stick shift.”
I will always own a stick shift car. And it will also probably only be an import, never a domestic marque vehicle. If I have to, I will stick with vintage cars. I will buy them from areas outside the snowbelt.
It's absolutely a trend, though, far more pronounced in the US than other places. That said, the only Auto manufacturer I've heard confirm that they won't offer a manual option anymore is Ferrari, and I really do doubt it'll disappear completely, unless the whole concept of the car is laid to rest, but I don't think that'll happen in my lifetime.
Although it's not a true "manual", Ford is bringing over their dual-clutch Powershift tranny's to the States this yr. It's available in their new Fiesta & hopefully will carryover to other models. The dual-clutch Powershifts don't use torque converters, so they're true "automated" manuals. I think the demand for manuals will be kept alive by sports cars since shifting is one of the few ways that enthusiasts can actually enjoy the art of driving in normal everyday traffic.
Location: Still in Portland, Oregon, for some reason
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I think the best manual transmission car I've ever driven has to be a 1995 Mazda Miata M-Edition. This car was a California car brought up here by a friend of my dad's and when I last drove it in October, it only had 44,000 miles on it. That car is so much fun to drive but the stick shift is responsible for about 90% of that. The clutch is light and the shift linkage is short and tight.
They sold the car to a friend and it went back down to L.A. If the friend ever gets rid of it, I told them I get first dibs.
I once was hardcore auto trans...you know, "feel of the road" and that junk. A few knee issues and clutch pedaling on hour home in traffic awith said bad knee put that to rest. So did the Hurricane Rita evac.
It gets tougher to get a manual trans vehicle to pass emissions now.
I'll take an autostick and eat all the cake I wish when it's time to find a car such equipped.
No, I don't get bored with an auto trans vehicle, either. Parking an F150 in a tight space takes care of that.
My first car had a stick shift. The next one after that had an auto trans, and now I'm back to a stick. It's a completely different experience. Nothing can change a car's everyday driving dynamics more than swapping to a manual transmission from an auto, or vice versa. An auto makes it much easier to drive smoothly, but after driving a stick for a while, the feedback and throttle response you get from an auto feels artificial and unnatural. The layer of electronics that separate you from the car, well, do exactly that. They separate you from the mechanical aspects of driving. And that's fine, but your motor will only be honest with you if you row the gears yourself.
Blame the traffic issue, but the real issue of why automatics are more prevalent is because folks are (attempting to) multitask way too much instead of paying attention to what really is going on around them. I mean, can you imagine someone trying to talk, text, and eat at the same time behind the wheel if they had to row their own too?!
I've always owned a manual car but for me they are too slow now having driven modern race cars with paddle shifters and flatchange devices. It just doesn't do anything for me, the old manual is out of date compared to the latest technology.
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