And where are you from? And how old? Not “do you” but just if you know how.
I’m in the US, mid 30s and can (and do) drive a manual transmission.
And where are you from? And how old? Not “do you” but just if you know how.
I’m in the US, mid 30s and can (and do) drive a manual transmission.
This thread is an amusing display of sample bias. Only people that want to respond yes and brag about it bothering to respond.
In reality only about 2/3rds of people in the US can drive stick and almost no one owns manual cars.
I’ve never driven a manual car. I’ve had people be like “You can’t drive manual?!” and then I would respond “So are you going to teach me?” The answer is always No, of course not, not in their car (assuming they even owned a manual, which none do anymore). My parents had manual cars but sold them 10+ years before having me.
I understand how a clutch works. It wouldn’t be difficult to learn. But what reason or motivation is there to learn when almost no cars are manual? They total something like 2% of new car sales. If you’re buying something like a 718 GT4 RS or a 911 GT3 RS for maximum driving engagement that’s great, but those cars are priced for the 1% of the 1%.
Even if you had a fun car, which I do, the drive to work is stop-and-go, roads are full, even the fun country backroads are filled with traffic on weekends, forests are burned down, gas is eye-watteringly expensive if you have a slightly performant vehicle. The time to have fun driving cars was 40 years ago.
Agree that fun driving is essentially over, but I don’t think automatic cars are as common outside North America.
In Europe ~80% of cars have manual transmission, mainly due to the (in the past) better fuel efficiency.
Modern automatic cars have often slightly better fuel efficiency, but they cost quite a bit more to buy and maintain, and very nearly everyone knows how to drive stick, so people usually don’t bother.
Edit: As we stop having fun driving cars, should we finally also say goodbye to race biking, and fun motorcycling, once and for all?
Disagree that fun driving is over. Have you driven a tesla?
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There are still fun cars. It’s getting incredibily difficult to have fun driving them.
I have not.
Do they somehow make it fun to be queueing at a busy intersection?
Is driving 70km/h behind a truck somehow a blast if you’re in a Tesla?
If so I’ll make it a priority to try one out ASAP!
Are manuals fun in those instances?
No car is fun in those instances. But that is how we spend the majority of our time on the road.
Hence, “fun driving is over”.