I would give my left leg...

[NiHaoMike]

Originally Posted by MadisonMPG

I wish my car had the fun and MPG of the manual, and the ease of the auto.

In traffic, I want an auto sooo bad.

There's automated manual and CVT. And don't forget EVs...

[koihoshi]

Lol that was good!

I hate driving automatics. Funny story about that.... my fiance used to ONLY drive automatics. I told her "You have SO much more control in your car and you'll feel more in tune with it by learning to drive a stick." she told me i was crazy and she would NEVER ever drive a stickshift if it was the last thing she ever did and she had to die going to the hospital.

Well, her little crappy eagle summit died on her one day. So i fixed it.

It broke down again.

I fixed it.

It broke down....... again. So i said "f*** this, you're driving my car till i feel like fixing this again." she freaked out and went "AHHHHH no i can't drive a stick!" so i went out and took her to a parking lot and had her craptastically shifting within an hour. Rough.... and not so great.....

1 week later.... she got excited she was matching gears properly.... and shifting crisp... and not killing the car....

Another week later..... she was excited she wasn't intimidated by hills anymore!

3 months later she finally said "you're right.... you do notice all the weird things with learning it because you can feel how it shifts and how it starts and stops. And it's even better this way in the snow!" i replied with "Oh REALLY? huh..... never knew that one..." and she gave me "ok ok....." kind of look.

So i bought a Porsche 944 and gave her my car and sold the Eagle. She got excited. So in teaching my fiance to drive a stick I successfully:

- got her to feel confident in driving a stick
- got my point across
- got rid of that horrible POS car
- got a MUCH more reliable car for her
- got a Porsche out of the deal

SCORE!


..... if you want entertainment though (since my story isn't horribly funny) go to a vacant parking lot with someone who drives stick but doesn't watch any rally racing.... and tell them that left foot braking is better in parking lots for gas mileage. When they ask what that is, you just tell them to use their left foot to brake so they can use their right foot for gas. Watch in hilarity as they mash it "lightly" and just about throw themselves into the wheel and go "You're an ASS!" as you laugh. Granted it IS a real technique to use in rally and things like that, it always cracks me up.... did that to my sister once and i thought she was gonna punch me in the face.

[dcb]

Originally Posted by koihoshi

...
So i bought a Porsche 944 ...
SCORE!

LOL, I think the phrase you are looking for is "ECO FAIL"

[koihoshi]

Originally Posted by dcb

LOL, I think the phrase you are looking for is "ECO FAIL"

Yes yes yes.... i know.... I think we've gone over this in another said thread

i'm aware it doesn't get great mileage (and that many people hate it) but i have been using the ecomodder driving techniques to try and get the best possible mileage out of it. I love my car though, and that's all that matters to me



My fiance on the other hand is getting the wonderful 30s and 40s gas mileage in that ZX2. I'm okay with that since she commutes farther than me.

[dcb]

I sold my metro to a young woman who didn't know stick, she had no problem picking it up from what I hear.

[koihoshi]

Yeah, true, some people are naturals at it. Others are horrible at it. I think the largest thing is intimidation factor. Granted yeah there's more to multitask, but it's not that bad.

I still am a firm believer that you should learn to drive a stick no matter what if you hold a license, since you never know if you'll ever be in a circumstance where an emergency may come up and you have no choice!

[dcb]

Everyone in my family can drive stick. My mom used to let me shift the gears from the passenger seat when I was a kid, while she did the clutch, traffic permitting of course.

[bgd73]

Just yesterday flying around in the greasy snow. I am hills all around, bangor is ...almost san franciscan like that.

Flew around a corner, pretending rally driver as normal
...and realized, it did not matter how big the brakes are nor the tires.... 4lo and jake braking down the slope in 1st was the win...still sliding, but very controllable. Some autos could do this, but today, not many.

[RobertSmalls]

A friend says my Insight feels more well-planted in the snow than my Subaru did. Hah! No, it's just that I can no longer drift around corners, now that I have FWD. Meaning the Insight is probably a safer winter car than the Subaru.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by thatguitarguy

Maybe I'm missing the joke, but he wouldn't be able to work the clutch without his left leg, or is that the joke??

How much is a sense of humor on ebay?

Even if that was the joke, I have already been aware of people operating a clutch without using the left leg

A quick search on YouTube is going to lead you to many videos showing disabled drivers in cars fitted with manual transmission all around the 3rd-world, including my homeland Brazil.

I used to have a neighbor who had his left leg weakened due to polio, and he once told me he had a local derivative of the Hillman Avenger with the manual transmission. I'm just not sure if it had the clutch adapted to operate manually or turned into a servo-operated automatic clutch. And some 7 or 8 years ago I saw a VW Kombi from the '70s with a hand lever to operate the clutch, since its driver had his left leg amputated.