[RD] "Don't you ever ask them why - if they told you, you will cry" - The Generation Gap Megathread

[mitsho]

I never learned to drive a stick. Automatics dominate the American car scene these days.

We've joked that a manual shifting control is the best insurance against American Car Thiefs...

But nowadays I am also one that uses those "automatic side parking" routines, it's just so much fast and since I practically never side park, I have practically forgotten how to do it.

But this is also why the automatic will be lost due to self-driving cars. The manual shifts will stay and become "sports cars" as in the thing you do as a hobby on special driveways where you can really slide and stuff. Bright new world

 

[tjs282]

Compact cars too. If something is light weight and underpowered, it still feels a lot better with a stick than an auto. Not that it makes it a fast car. But it takes something which is annoyingly slow and turns it into something which is at least average.

Oh god yes.

My wife and I rented a Ford Falcon automatic for driving + camping round Oz one time (we did a circuit from Melbourne to Alice, then over to Townsville and back down the east coast), and it was great (apart from crossing the GDR, most of the drive was pretty flat). Then we went to New Zealand and rented a Nissan Micra, also automatic (all that was available), but severely underpowered. Going up and down the hill-roads north and south of Auckland (with our rucksacks full of dive gear), it never seemed to know which way to jump: "Ooh, slow, hard work! Second! Ooh, high revs, better try third! No, second! No, third!"

 

[Cutlass]

Oh god yes.

My wife and I rented a Ford Falcon automatic for driving + camping round Oz one time (we did a circuit from Melbourne to Alice, then over to Townsville and back down the east coast), and it was great (apart from crossing the GDR, most of the drive was pretty flat). Then we went to New Zealand and rented a Nissan Micra, also automatic (all that was available), but severely underpowered. Going up and down the hill-roads north and south of Auckland (with our rucksacks full of dive gear), it never seemed to know which way to jump: "Ooh, slow, hard work! Second! Ooh, high revs, better try third! No, second! No, third!"

I had a Toyota Corolla for a number of years before joining this forum. It had the base engine and 5 speed. Dull little car, and no one would ever accuse it of being fast. But with the stick it was reasonably peppy. Until an uninsured street racer found me.