Stick Shift & Mechanical Watches

Oddly I have a 4x4 with stick shift and a stick 4x4 shifter also…Most 4x4s are still stick but the 4x4 is all push button nowadays. (If anything goes wrong they limp home in 2WD 😲)

Only thing that beeps is the horn. 👍

Interesting.

I always loosely likened mechanical watches to (in no particular order)
- telemark skiing
- whipping cream with a whisk
- film photography
- turntables and vinyl records
- cast iron and stainless steel skillets
- any cooking from scratch
- playing an actual musical instrument
….or anything that can make your life miserable if you don’t have a good handle on them. If you do? Joy!

All this speaks to an era more or less and the organic connection with the action or object. Much of the above is coming back in vogue, except for the manual transmission! With less and less manufacturers offering stick shift, I can see cars with manual transmissions becoming the “mechanical watches of the future” where some will be looking for nostalgia and a mechanical connection with the car and the road. Who knows, I might be one of them!

In the trucking business, fleet owners now have to pay a premium to get trucks with manual transmission these days when a few years ago, it was the opposite. More and more new drivers will choose an automated transmission for their CDL training. Given the shortage of drivers, fleet owners attract new drivers with automated transmissions. The older drivers are fighting for the 13-18 speed non synchronized transmissions. They wouldn’t dare be caught driving an automated transmission! Ironically, those older drivers that were forced into the modern transmissions, won’t go back to manual! I started with a 13 speed for 3 years and drove an auto the last 2 years. Made my life much easier and I felt much less tired after 14 hours of the road. As far as trucks go, I’ll never go back to manual, even for nostalgia’s sake. After all, it’s still work!

I for one owned manual shift cars for the better part of 20 years. A plethora of BMWS 2002s to 525i) all manual. Our last manual shift was a 2006 Volkswagen Jetta 2.0T. Shifted like butter. All autos since. All with “manual shift” modes which I never use but occasionally for shits and giggles.

EDIT: I don’t miss it but I wouldn’t mind having another!

Cheers,

Still have one! 1988 Mustang LX 5.0 hatch. Paid $2500 for it in 2005 when I moved to San Diego. Rust free. A lot of mods, just need to get a proper dyno tune. Haven’t driven it much since my kids were born though.

I have always had a manual transmission in the stable once I was able to own a car……Mrs. P the same. Here’s her past favorite (long gone)

Unfortunately some shoulder problems mean that she does not enjoy driving the current one right now.

And a couple of pictures of shift knobs….
Not a cue ball but close


And the 917 replica

Seems around here that many people cannot drive a stick….hence the graphic below


Found these in the laptop archive (waiting for a meeting to start)

Have owned a stick since my first car- 1985 Toyota Landcrusier (which still had locking hubs- tons of fun when stuck in knee deep mud).

Current stick shifts:

1993 BMW M5


2017 Mini Countryman-S (only made in stick until 2019, this one took me several months of hunting to find).

From my 1977 Audi Fox (a Rabbit with rings), to my ‘84 Scirocco and then a 2002 Passat, manual transmissions were, well, my standard. My 2008 Audi TT, however, was a 6 speed automatic. The paddles were fun and kinda cool, and the shifter sorta-kinda replicated shifting if you preferred. Usually, I left it in sport mode.

My wife’s 2005 Impreza was a 5-speed. In August 2021, after 16 years and almost 300K KM on the Subaru, she opted for a new 8spd automatic VW Golf Highline. She still misses her Subaru, but since she’s in outside sales, traffic is a little more bearable with the automatic. She still prefers manual, however.

My well-maintained Audi was only 13 years old but that’s approaching the ‘gonna get expensive’ stage. In typical ‘hey shiny thing mode’, I liked the new VW’s interface (song titles! album covers! better iPhone connectivity! maps!), sunroof, and it had room for my full drum kit (I could fit a jazz kit in my Audi!); my wife was tired of me relying on the Subaru for gigs and “there’s no way you’re going to move gear in my new car.”

Now, I’ve an aversion to buying a brand new car (my wife’s is a tax write off). I’d love a new Audi or Porsche but limited budget and skyrocketing fuel costs were factors - and besides, the TT made me a really impatient bastard in city traffic. And where can I really open up a 911? There are no autobahns in Vancouver. For poops and laughs, I looked for and found a 2019 Golf with 22K KM (14K miles) on the odometer someone traded in on a Hyundai Ionic. No one wanted it, I was told, ‘since only older guys like driving stick’. I took it out on the highway and it felt like coming home (I miss my Scirocco). Not as fast as the Audi (nor as well appointed as the VW GTI and R I took out later), but even at 100km/hr I had plenty of gearing left. And since I turned 60, I’m giving less of a shit about ‘what car do you drive?’. I also tried the 8 speed automatic. I asked my mechanic his opinion and he looked at me and said, “Dude, it’s not even a question. Buy the 6 speed.”

So yeah. Contrary to the behavior of many men my age, I traded my Audi for a 6-speed 2019 Golf. It has more storage space than an Audi Q3. I keep telling myself that, anyway.