both of my cars are manual. I'm replacing the clutch on my 2033 Passat after 110K miles. I like stick - I prefer it. My sons learned on my cars too. it's not a millennial thing,

Funny thing, the first two cars I ever drove were both stick. The first time my dad said he was going to take me out in an automatic, I didn't want to do it. "But dad, I don't know how to drive one of those, but I can drive a manual. Lets just stick with those." Yeah, I was scared to drive an automatic. hahahah

I was visiting my brother's family a few years ago. While his son was driving home from college a few weeks earlier, the engine in his car threw a rod and punched a hole in the side of the block. While I was visiting, my brother had just picked up a new car and decided to give his old one to his son. It was a standard. My brother has no patience. I could see a major storm brewing. I volunteered to go pick his son up from his summer job and take him for a ride in his "new" car. I had him drive to a nearby high school parking lot where we spent the next few hours patiently practicing starting and stopping. It was on a hill side so had some grade. He picked it up real quick. I trusted him to take my two kids out to eat and a movie that night. He has driven standard ever since.

I learned to drive on a '44 ex military Jeep - 4WD. When I first drove my family's Oldsmobile w/ an automatic, I kept letting off the gas when it would shift. My dad informed me that wasn't necessary. My wife can drive my small tractor (of course you just put it in which ever gear you want to drive it in) but not a stick shift car.

You're absolutely correct. It's just a matter of what technology is current. In 1900, you could probably count the number of people in the USA who could drive a car on one foot. It wasn't because they were a bunch of limp-dick centennials, it was because they'd never done it.

Amen.... I know plenty of folks my age that can drive stick just fine...

I also know plenty of folks in their 40s that couldn’t get my stick shift corolla out of a parking lot if their life depended on it....

my 74 year old mother in law absolutely cannot drive a a manual trans car. My FIL tried to teach her how maybe 50 years ago, and it nearly led to their divorce, lol!

Conversely, my wife was taught to drive in my FIL’s VW bus (stick shift, of course). Today, in her mid 50’s, she still drives a manual trans Cayman. ❤️

I remember when I was a kid, my mom almost launched all of us kids out of a borrowed Dodge Dart.
Was an auto trans and had power brakes. Our car had a manual trans and standard brakes.
Learned to drive on a 64 Galaxie with 3 on the tree and my dad's welding truck. He said if I could drive that, I could drive almost anything....
Will have to find something with a standard for my kid to beat up when he becomes of age to drive.

Back in the early 1990s when millennials were still in grade school I stupidly banked downtown. I can't even remember what made me do something stupid like that.

Anyway, I needed to talk to my banker about something that I don't even remember. So off on a trip to downtown OKC. The bank had no parking except a parking garage they owned, and it was valet parking only. I had a choice of finding a space 1/2 mile or more away or the parking garage.

I was in my daily driver 74 914 2.0 and pulled up reluctantly at the valet spot. As always I put the emergency brake on. I get out and ask the guy, can you drive this? Of course he said I can drive anything. He fired it up, and put it 2nd gear and killed it. He fired it up, and put it in 3rd and killed it. He fired it up again and I said it would help a lot if you used first gear. He rowed around and tried 4th with predictable results. So I walked over and while he had it started and the clutch in I put it in first. Of course most of you know that is against the spring and to the back left. He moved an inch and killed it because the parking brake was still on. I suggest it would help a lot if he took the parking brake off. Of course he looked all around in the center, and felt under the dash, and popped the front trunk. I walked over and closed the front trunk, and reached in and turned the parking brake off which is on the left of the driver.

He pulled it forward and put it in the spot reserved for the bank president about 10 feet away. When I returned he said I could just back it out and go.

Shortly after all that I moved all my accounts to a local credit union in the suburbs near me.

I for one am thankful the starter is no longer a clutch-less crank arm through the front grill, and that syncros and the clutch exists.

I am teaching my 2 daughters on a manual M3, we have graduated to handbrake hill starts and double clutching. Some occasional wheel spin and light clutch smell but both are determined and enjoying the elite status among their peers.

My dad drove trucks for the RAF in WWII before getting into Spits, he rarely used the clutch to shift, preferring to match revs, even on newer (60s-80s) cars.

You might need to change the date for that five toe count.(Unless you're doing some alternative numbering system for the toes.)

According to the DOE there were were almost 13,000 electric cars in 1900.

That is not including steam and gasoline.

I went to an event recently that was valet parking only. When the attendant tried to take off in 3rd gear I made him get out. I ended up parking in a CVS lot two blocks away.

The US military made the Humvee auto because they knew the trend was for kids not to learn manual.

My 93 year old cousin has a funny story from WW2. His CO sent him into town to pick up something but he tried to get out of it because he (and my dad) were from Brooklyn and didn't know how to drive. He was an experienced P-51 fighter pilot.

Back in the late 1950s my dad had a fellow Air Force officer in the hospital. Dad went to see the guy, and was asked to drive his car home since he was going to be in the hospital for a while. So dad said sure. He was handed the keys to a mid 1950s VW bug but dad grew up driving stick shift so was not worried.

He got to the car, and fired it up, and tried every possible position of the stick to find reverse. He finally had to push it backwards into the lot to get to go forward. He figured the POS just did not have reverse. Dad called the buddy and he laughed and said he had forgotten to mention you have to push DOWN on the sifter to get into reverse. Just something other cars don't do.

I drove tractors and motorcycles before I ever drove a stick-shift car.
First manual car was a '3 on the tree' in drivers training.
I'm not sure if that was the best to learn on...the linkage was so worn from other students, it was like a guys 'first time'!

Hmmm, didn't know there were that many, then. Change my quote to 1880 and you could count them on your balls and have a couple left over. :)

Taught my son and daughter to drive stick on an old M-B 240D my brother donated to us for my son's first car. He picked it up just fine in the parking lot we chose to use as a practice field.
Everything was fine until we found out one of the motor mounts was broken. When we replaced it, all of a sudden he couldn't drive it without killing it on take off. Neither could my daughter.
Once I explained what had been going on with the old mount and why the car was acting differently now with the new one, they both understood and got it down pretty good.
The 240 had a bad 2nd gear syncro and required careful shifting, both up and down.
When I went for a ride with my son shortly before we got rid of the car, he demonstrated that he'd learned double clutching and the art of momentum driving, which that car really needed if you wanted to keep up with traffic.

Gotta go back even further.

The first time the police were involved in a car chase was 1867.

At the experienced age of 15 with learners permit in hand, I used to take the younger brothers for a drive out when mom left for a few hours. Usually in the family Impala wagon. One day we used moms VW bug which was parked facing out of the garage. After tooling around a bit I got it home and couldn't figure out how to get it into reverse (same as above) to back her in. Pushed it...