Volkswagen Beetle

 

Same here, I learned in a '97! I learn that reverse needs to be pushed in only after I drove it into a dirt hill and ripped the front license plate out.

 

The Beetle I drove was close to 30 years older .

 

That's infinitely cooler than the one I drove!

 

I learned at 16 right when I got my license in the late '80s. I figured if I had to learn to drive at ALL, it made no sense to learn only in an automatic. What if I needed to drive a stick in an emergency someday? I didn't want to have to learn to drive all over again, so I figured learn the hard way once and be done. Plus that is the only sort of car my parents had, so if they were gonna teach me, it would have to be in that...

I don't know if I took a separate drivers course, or just did the hours with my folks, but most of the process was learned after or before hours at the LA Zoo, which had a nice big and empty parking lot for stress free practice with the clutch. Mostly, the hardest part is learning to stop and start without stalling out, so that is all we did. Learned how to coordinate the clutch and the gas to get going, and then stop, and then go, and then stop.

I don't remember if I had one of those courses with an instructor and the second set of brakes on the passenger side or not, but I know that I learned how to do it right in that zoo lot in my Pop's Ravenna Green 1974 Porsche 914. The pedals were way too far to reach, so even with the seat all the way forward, I still needed two pillows behind me to be sure I could get the clutch in all the way. That car wasn't the easiest shifting thing in the world either, so after getting good at that on his car, everything else was pretty much gravy...

It makes me sad that it is so hard to find any stick shift cars these days... Only the CVT's everywhere. Last year, right before someone stole my 95 civic coupe FOR the transmission, I couldn't even get my car smogged at the closest shop because nobody who worked there knew how to drive it. Had a dickens of a time finding my Crz in a manual too - searching the listings for used cars looked promising until I filtered for that - a few hundred cars available nationwide suddenly drops down to single digits. Got lucky to find one with low mileage because the few that were MT had all been driven near or above the 100Kmark already too. It was one of those unfortunate situations that they use to scam people with (spouse got cancer and can't drive, only keeping one car) except it happened to be true in my case. I would have gone with the CVT if we couldn't find one after exhaustive searching, but fortunately once I decided on it, I found the ad for mine within a week. I liked the drive on the MT SOOOO much more than the auto/cvt, it just isn't the same feeling at all.

The gears are short though, which means a lot of rowing in traffic. But Honda makes a smooth as butter stick shift....

 

I learned on a BMW convertable and a Jeep Wrangler. Couldn't be two different cars.

It's pretty hard to hurt the car. The gears will grind, but they are not soft metal. If anything, you might burn the clutch a bit. I recommend learning on a huge flat parking lot and starting out just pushing in the clutch, putting it in first, then slowly letting out the clutch until the car starts moving. Learn to find that point and then slowly start to add throttle. Finding a video of what you're actually doing in the engine / trans can really help wrap your head around it.

good luck!

 

I learned is this bad boy. It was a 82 or 84 model toyota corolla station wagon. This is the only photo I have of it.. scanned of course from 35 mm

 

My late dad taught me in his early 1973 Chevy Malibu. I wanted to learn right from the get go. Fast forward to now my 2015 Fit is you gessed right, a manual trans. No sissy auto trans for me.

 

My father taught me how to ride a motorcycle before i learned to drive a car. I had a learners permit for the motorcycle before i had an auto license. Naturally this translated well a couple years later when i got my first car, a fun little 5 speed focus. Every car I've owned has been a manual, and every internal combustion car I will buy will have a manual.

 

mustang mach e is manual also

 

lol "that's no mustang!"

 

Two short sessions: one on a 2007 Toyota Yaris and the other on a 1998 BMW 3 series.
But the best learning I did was when I traded my only car (2006 Civic AT) for a 2007 Fit MT. Stalled twice on the way home lol

 

I learned to drive a stick with my dad in 95 Toyota 2wd short-bed that was basically a small car with a bed, a 96 F150 that was my Grandfathers, and my first car a 93 Subaru Justy and I mostly drove on some Main roads around where I lived at the time, a pasture, Logging Roads in The Great North-woods of Maine! It was a lot of just turning back and forth and going down the road and the hardest thing to learn on a standard is just starting in 1st but the rest is easy and you really learn more and get better the longer you drive a standard!