After driving the same car for 16 years, I bought a new one!

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The main reason why manual transmissions are dying is there's just too damn much traffic, traffic lights, and stop signs. It's also takes more effort to eat/drink/talk/text. It gets old pretty fast constantly rowing through gears non stop day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade in a daily driver. I bought manual transmission vehicles for reliability reasons when I was young. Treat them gently, change the oil every 30K miles, and they can easily outlast the vehicle twice over while achieving better fuel mileage. But if you're driving them hard and bangin' through the gears at redline (like most idiots do), expect clutch replacements and transmission rebuilds in your future. That doesn't include axle replacements (FWD) or U-joints/center support bearings/diff/axle shafts/bearings (RWD).

 

For 20 years, my work was 3.3 miles away but I hit 19 stop lights and 2 stop signs to get there, both directions. Most of the time, I used the freeway....which increased my distance to nearly 8 miles but it cut my stops (and aggravation) down by 70%. Even then, it still got old constantly shifting 6 days a week through town.

 

 
 
Yeah Dan, I commuted from Los Gatos to San Ramon for several years in a '97 VW Passat VR6 wagon with 5-speed stick.  I loved driving that car, but not in stop & go traffic.  I'd leave long gaps between myself and the car ahead of me on I-680 so I could crawl along in 2nd.  Fortunately, I had a cush job and a cool boss who let me work a 7-3:30 shift to avoid the worst of the traffic.

 

I had to rescue that car from Dave, who was murdering the clutch among other things.  It's still among the favorites of cars I've owned, though.
 
I agree with both Dan and Ralph about driving a stick in the heavy traffic in the Bay Area.  The last manual transmission car I owned was a ‘96 Toyota Tacoma with a 5 speed. I really loved that truck!  But driving the 10 mile commute home every night on Hwy 101 in the heavy stop and go traffic was too much for me.  My left hip was just starting to go bad, although at the time I didn’t know it.  But my left leg just ached to the core with the constant shifting in that bumper to bumper stop and go traffic and this was in ‘96, the traffic is way worse now 27 years later.

 

I traded the Tacoma for a ‘97 Honda Civic coupe with an AT and I haven’t owned a manual transmission car since.  Frankly, I think that 4 forward gears are plenty for a manual shift car.  Now there are manual transmissions with 6 speed transmissions and that’s just too damn much shifting.  My favorite manual transmission car that I ever owned was a ‘71 Ford Maverick with 3 on the three.  This car was easy as hell to drive in heavy traffic because I only needed to shift between 2nd and 3rd in heavy traffic, I could drive it in 2nd down to 10 mph without having it lug.  And I could easily adjust the clutch myself.  

 

It would be fun to have another old car with a 3 on the tree to drive just for the hell  of it, but my days of driving in heavy stop and go traffic with a 5 or 6 speed manual transmission are over.

 

Eddie
 
TMGPS

I'm a member of The Manual Gearbox Preservation Society

https://tmgps.org/

They have an active Facebook group as well.

I appreciate the control and the mechanical simplicity of having a non-automated transmission in my vehicles. My current 2010 Honda Fit has been the most reliable and really most fun car I have ever owned. Pity that a year or so after my model they added a 6th ratio to the box. I'm saddened that Honda has elected to drop the Fit model for North America so as to push sales of the Compact SUV HR-V model which is built on the same platform. America loves short wheelbase high CoG vehicles to make driving more dangerous, I digress...

This may be my last manual gearbox auto I fear as I really have no interest in sport model cars anylonger. Time marches on, I'm just glad I don't have to turn the crank on the front bumper to get the car running.

Photo of the spiffy TMGPS Sticker my car wears. They have logos in all common shift patterns so as to match the vehicle!

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I would pay to join the TMGPS if they had a sticker with the column shift H pattern.  That's what my '50 GMC has and I really enjoy driving it.  So simple and easy, even without syncromesh.

 

I can't say the same for my 2003 Subaru Baja's 5-speed manual.  Even a rebuilt clutch didn't help much.  The gearbox is balky and the engagement is uneven.  It's fine in the upper three gears but getting there is annoying.  Per Subaru forums, that's supposedly just how their sticks are.  Still better than an automatic that won't allow the car to get out of its own way when attempting to accelerate up an inclined on-ramp to the freeway, though.
 
The only time I drove a vehicle with a manual trans was when I worked at that hardware store the summer of '77. It was a '69 or '70 Ford F-100 truck, and I hated driving it. Once when parking it by the dock, I let the clutch out, and it went forward and hit the wall. The manager wasn't very happy that I bent the grille and headlight trim.
 
I had several MT cars and loved them. Really a lot more fun. You feel more connected with the car.

But an MT in stop and go traffic gets really old, really quickly. No thanks.

But it's a moot point, really. If I continue with my present mileage I'll probably have my Cube with its CVT forever.
 
Traffic near any city has taken away all the fun...

and my old knees won't tolerate a stick anymore anyway, but when I want manual shifting fun I can still shift my '71 2 stroke Kawasaki bike with my foot, no problem.
And while our next (and last) car will be a Toyota electric SUV when they have just the one we want, the bike and our '69 Cutlass V8 will still be in the garage when I croak!

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