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Anytime I run into someone who expresses an interest in learning to drive stick, I'm happy to teach them. Fer gawd sakes, take 'em out in your MT Fit. Seems to me all the vast majority of younger drivers who can't drive stick are missing out on the funnest part of driving. I learned to drive on a "three-on-the-tree" 1950 Dodge business coupe. Never looked back. A few years ago I taught two nephews to drive stick in my 1987 Porsche 944 Turbo. It's actually a good car to teach stick because it's got enough torque it doesn't stall very easily. They both thought they'd died and gone to heaven. Couldn't wait 'til the next school day to tell their friends. The older one picked up the knack quicker, and within an hour or two, he was on a country road doing 80 and I was telling him we need to cool it a bit. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing...

You start out in an empty parking lot (a church on a Saturday is usually good, or a synagogue on a Sunday!) with the basics of teaching clutch-gas balance, slip point, and go from there. First you make some starts in forward, doing 1st-2nd-3rd. Then it's time to back up and practice parking. Yeah, they'll stall it a few times, and maybe grind a little bit. but you coach them what to do and anytime things go bad, push in the left pedal and try again. It takes patience and understanding of how a manual tranny works but they'll get the hang of it.

The one exception was a close friend whose wife got an advanced degree in classical piano. You'd think with her incredible skills manipulating those foot pedals and all those keys, a really good piano player would pick up on driving a manual real fast. Not my friend's wife. He rented a car for a whole weekend so as to save on the manual tranny on his BMW but she never got the hang of it. Now the manuals are no longer in the garage, there are 3 BMW automatics. Oh well, there's always the exception... ;-)

Bottom line, share your knowledge and experience, others will enjoy learning and everyone will be better off and have more fun driving.

 

haha... you quoting me, made me notice a mistake in my post... I got my license in 1994 and shortly after that, I was "relegated" to driving the broken down Ford Escort hatch... which was a STICK! I say broken down, because the heater barely worked, the driver's side keyhole was missing (had to open passenger side to get in)... radio was stolen the day after it was bought (hum... fishy that). And eventually, the starter started giving out. That's when my second brother (older than me, but not oldest) showed me how to just a "push/rolling start"... basically, get the car moving in neutral then pop into 1st to start the engine. WACKY!!!

So, I got to drive it my junior year of high school... sometime in the summer, just as senior year was about to start... the car disappeared. My oldest brother decided to sell it! WAHHHHH.

As for people in the process of learning, stalling and grinding gears.... I'm STILL doing that! gahhh.

 

I agree. The very first car I drove was my Mom's Mazda 323 in an empty parking lot in the snow. Then she had the 98 Accord which I mentioned earlier, and I got more experience with. My sister which is 10 years younger than me, learned on the same car and was driving stick within a few days, the got her license, etc. Then, she crashed it up, lol. Since then no more manual trans for me to practice on : (

Now, sadly, the family car is an 04 Nissan Sentra Auto and its garbage compared to any Honda I've ownded. She hates it as well.

 

Truth! My dad taught me on a 500 hp 79 Z28 with the trickiest clutch I've ever driven. Once I had the technique down he said "now you can drive any clutch."

 

I learned on a pickup truck at work and a diesel rabbit- that's 40 hp on a 2000 lb car. Easy to stall if you're not good with the clutch...

As far as control, 99% of the time the car's smarter at shifting than I am, and the other 1% there are the paddles on my Fit Sport. In an emergency situation I'd rather have both hands on the wheel and not have part of my brain's resources used for worrying about gears.

 

i learned way back in HS in an Impala, 3 on a tree. I just hopped in it and drove, no one really taught me. kinda common sense anyway, few minutes of feeling it usually does it for most people who already know how to drive in general. truck i drive at work now though has a Hercules clutch and syncs are out of it, kinda annoying but i don't have to heel and toe it as jolts very smoothly. takes quite the arm to get it in 3rd and 5th too. prefer auto in my personal vehicles so i can relax.

worst i ever drove was an old ford 4spd dump truck. clutch was mostly out and grind em till ya find em gearset. very hard to get going, usually would shake something fierce and took just the right touch to get it up to 2nd. certainly wasnt the vehicle to pull out in front of traffic in. no point in clutching, drive something like that and anything else seemed easy as pie cause that truck required a little bit of everything, the pos.

handbrake turns are something useful to have practiced for safety and good control of a car when needed. saved my life once when someone pulled in front of me. was very close.

 

A couple of times I was i situation where some person or some car came out from nowhere. Just breaking would not have stopped my 82 Corolla SR5 & 94 Civic (no anti-lock). I down shifted a few gears in progression and steered away at the same time. I would not have been able to do that with an AT. IN an AT, the engine may actually work against your breaking even if your foot is off the gas paddle as the engine is still driving the transmission. I have driven a few AT since the Civic, including an 09 Fit Sport. I always feel that it takes more effort for the break to stop the cars and takes a greater distance to do so.
Also, most AT car drivers don't shift to neutral or apply hand break at stop lights. I acquired the same habit after a few years driving AT cars. Ocassionally, when I was distracted, My foot press on the break would loosen up and the car started rolling forward. That never happened in the previous 16 years of driving MT cars. And it was much more fun to drive.

But if my daily commute involves a lot of bumper to bumper traffic, stop-n-go, uphill downhill stop-n-go, I would prefer an AT. I was stuck on the include of a long bridge once during rush hour, My left leg got tired after an hour of trying to make sure I move forward without rolling backward before I engaged the clutch. I! st time I appreciated an AT.

 

I don't imagine the transmission does much to slow a car down in comparison with slamming on the brakes. And especially in a panic-steer situation I want both hands free. Of course now with ABS you just slam them and that's one less thing to concentrate on.

 

Exactly. In a panic emergency stop situation you have no time to even think about downshifting. If you do downshift it probably takes away from your braking.

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When there were claims of runaway cars (I stepped on the brake but the car kept going) which are probably mostly attributable to stepping on the wrong pedal, Car & Driver Magazine tested a couple of cars- they put a brick on the gas, got up to maybe 60 mph, then slammed on the brakes.

Stopping distances weren't much more than with no brick on the gas pedal.

Given that, consider the opposite- how much could downshifting do compared to a brake pedal?

 

I am remembering an old Car Talk show-- where they discussed stopping a manual via downshifting vs breaking. The Car Guys said "which is cheaper to replace brakes or clutch"-- so they recommended stopping via using the brakes.

 

I can't see any situation where the engine's resistance to compression, transmitted through the clutch, transmission, and half-shafts, would provide more slowing power than brake shoes clamping down on a metal disk. Regardless, the time required to downshift, compression to build, and the lack of ability to modulate said power as directly (you would be doing it at the clutch rather than the brakes directly) would be seriously inferior unless the brake shoes/pads are so far gone they couldn't stop a Huffy.
The engine isn't driving the transmission - when the wheels are turning faster than the engine, the engine is providing drag. There's enough power at idle to creep the car along, but not much more, and the fluid coupling in the torque converter is easily overpowered by the brakes (which is why you can hold a car at a stop in Drive with one toe on the brake pedal).
Again, there's enough slippage there that there's no need to shift to Neutral, unless you so desire. And who applies a handbrake at stoplights even in a manual? I've known a few novices who did it because they were scared of hills, but even a steep hill isn't exactly a challenge for a MT driver who is even borderline competent.
Hills can be tiring if a car has a stiff clutch. Otherwise, it's no biggie. I spend every morning in stop-go traffic up a steep hill (20-30% grade). Only caveat is that I won't move if there's not a full carlength ahead of me... not worth the wear on the clutch.

I do find hills tiring on a motorcycle - my hand cramps up in stop/go situations, as you tend to slip the clutch far more on a motorcycle, and need to be more precise in your movements due to the greater power-weight ratio.

 

Well, there's one big advantage to stick - the average carjacker can't deal with it. :D

It feels downright weird when I get into a car with an automatic - even though my first driving experiences were auto. When it was time for me to get my own car, I took the "trial by fire" approach to learning stick, buying a $600 '76 Toyota Corolla beater with a 4-speed. It didn't take me long to get used to it, and I never looked back. Everything I've owned since then ('82 RX-7, '92 GMC Sonoma, '00 Saturn SL, and now the Fit) has had a clutch pedal.

In 1999 I took a trip to Great Britain, and was adventurous enough to rent a car, a new Rover 200. Sure enough, it was stick. It felt pretty weird shifting with the left hand!

About the only time I'd actually want an automatic would be if I was getting a 4x4 that I was going to use off-road, or a trailer-towing vehicle. For towing, I'd want something like the Duramax diesel/Allison automatic combo.

 

In regards to stopping power with brakes vs. downshifting - I paddle down from 5th to 3rd gear in my AT all the time when having to stop fast. Using the engine really slows the car down as opposed to the Fit's brakes. They aren't that good to begin with. Obviously, the faster your going the less accurate this will be.

When I'm stopped at a light, sometimes I will put the car in neutral and e-brake a couple clicks. I do this to avoid imprinting the rotors from heavy braking especially when its very hot outside. Or, if I don't feel like keeping the brake pedal depressed, sometimes I do it for comfort.

 

Down shifting might not slow a car down as much as the brakes but it does slow it down a good amount. A lot of times to save wear on my brakes I would use the paddles to down shift as I come up to a red light or slow traffic.

 

saving brakes and/or augmenting braking power is the ENTIRE point of downshifting when commuting.

 

Brakes have to be cheaper than a new automatic transmission... they're certainly cheaper than a new clutch!

 

Have you not ever downshifted to slow the car down?

 

its called throttle position induced vacuum. Technically the transmission type does not matter...all non hybrid cars can do this. Hybrid cars do this in simulation via software. It will not harm your tranny providing you do it correctly, like anything else. However it seems most do not even know how to fully utilize an automatic correctly beyond Park, rev, and drive so i wont waste further time.

To also note, there are other acceleration retarding mechanisms like exhaust braking, jake braking...etc.

 

For a slow car such as the Fit, i really dont think it makes much of a difference if its a manual or automatic. Yes the manual transmission may accelerate better, but not enough to make a real difference. I personally would never buy a high performance car with an automatic transmission and that's why i purchased my Fit with an auto tranny. I wanted a break from my other manual vehicles (05 wrangler, 08 civic si) and my automatic Fit is perfect for daily driving in Los Angeles.