When I get my new electric car next month, for the first time in my life I will not be driving a car with a manual transmission.
There are a lot of things I will miss about driving a stick shift. Most importantly, with a manual transmission you have more control over the car and your right foot is connected more closely to the torque of the engine. Whenever I’ve had to drive an automatic (rentals, usually) it’s been a thoroughly disgusting experience. Fortunately with the electric car I won’t really be giving that fundamental control, because electric motors have impossibly wide torque curves, far better than internal combustion engines, meaning they don’t need transmissions at all and thus react perfectly to your right foot. Plus you don’t have the oddities of different valve timings and such coming it at different RPMs and making the engine surge.
I remember first learning to drive in my parents’ cars. We had a Volvo station wagon that I think I did most of my learning on. I clearly remember the first time I pulled away from a stop light, turning left, and managed to execute the first-to-second shift at the same time as I was doing the turn. I told my Dad “look what I did!” and he said “you’re supposed to do that.” That was my Dad’s way of saying that I’d done it the way an adult was supposed to and I was on my way to acquiring the skill. That kind of thing is second nature to me now, but then it was quite a thrill to pull off without putting the car over the opposing curb — or grinding the gears.
The hardest thing to do in a manual is launching forward from a stop while pointed uphill. There are three pedals involved and you only have two feet. So you let off the brake and try to quickly dance over to the clutch and gas with the right timing such that you A) do get moving forward without B) goofing up the pedal timing and stalling the engine or worse C) rolling back into the car behind you. If you manage to stall the car, you get another chance, but now you’re probably a couple feet further back and closer to the car behind you. Growing up in Martinsville, the real test for this was the intersection of Vosseler Avenue and Washington Valley Road. Vosseler climbed up to met WVR in a T-intersection, and you’d really have to jump on the pedals to get the car launched up onto WVR. I think my parents let me suffer through that a few times (it’s pretty much impossible for a greenhorn to pull it off) before showing me the handbrake tactic, where you use the handbrake to replace the footbrake function (holding the car from rolling back), thus freeing up your two feet for the clutch and the accelerator.
Things I will miss about driving a manual:
– The roar of the engine when you are driving agressively and using the higher RPMs. God that V6 sounds great.
– Dropping the clutch and smoking the tires! With my current Audi I can even chirp the tires in second gear. Maaaan I will miss that. The electric cars have more torque, but they have launch control feature that prevents you from spinning the wheels when taking off. Bah!
– Doing speed matching gear shifts, where you try to shift gears without using the clutch. This was totally easy to do with my Honda’s gearbox — you could feel the beat frequency in the stick. But I hardly ever can pull it off with the Audi.
– Slowing the car to a crawl while still in gear, watching the revs go down below 750 and causing the engine to strain at the leash, until you finally relieve it with the clutch.
– Starting off in second because you know the loser in the Camry in front of you is going to be slow to start anyway so who needs the torque of first?
– Downshifting in preparation for a pass, or just staying in a lower gear to run the revs higher and have a bushel more power available at a mere flinch of your right foot.
– Watching the tachometer in my peripheral vision while driving. I can see the needle rotating around past the top of the dial (4000 RPM) without actually looking at it. Also, the Audi has an elegant design feature where the literal position of both the tach and speedometer line up (point in the same direction) only when in fourth gear. When in third the tach is higher than the speedo, and in fifth it’s lower; at fourth they match. So I can glance at the dash to remind myself what gear I’m in, without looking at or feeling for the gear shifter.
What I won’t miss:
– Smoking the clutch when A) trying to pull another car out of the backyard or B) when impressing a friend by revving up a launch. Done both.
A lot of people say they don’t want a manual because of stop-and-go traffic, but I’ve never had much of a problem with it. Of course, I don’t actually sit in stop-and-go traffic much (that’s a suburban problem), and to be fair, the times that I have sit in it for a long time I have started to get tired with all the clutching in and out.
This seems as good a time as any to inventory the cars I’ve owned:
1986-1988: a used 1980 VW Rabbit Diesel, bright yellow. Bought from Dad (yes I paid $1000 for it). Four gears, 0-60 in about 30 seconds, typically tested on that straight stretch of Brookside Drive just off King George road, just before the twisty part HIT THE BRAKES! The front end would start to float at speeds over 75 MPH. 49 horsepower. Do you know how hard it is to drive at a decent speed through the rolling hills of the Carolinas when you only have 49 horsepower?
1988-2000: a new 1989 Honda Civic DX Hatchback. Bought new with help from Grandma, the biggest leg up on life I ever got besides my four years of college education from Mom and Dad. Five gears, great fun to drive, I loved to rev it up to the redline and I pretty much did so for every shift for twelve years. However, by 2000 the lack of airbags, cruise control and ABS was starting to bother me …
2000-2011: a new 2000 Audi A4 2.8. Finally got to splurge on a nice car. Bought the fastest A4 you could get, meaning the one with the 2.8 liter V6 engine but without the Quattro four wheel drive feature, because that would add 500 pounds. Sometime I wish I had the Quattro, but in addition to the weight it was an expensive option. Not as all-out fun to throw around like the Honda, heavier and more muscular. Certainly the engine feels different — more low end torque, but less willing to rev high. Longitudinally mounted so you could twist the car a bit by reving the engine.
So long, clutch, I’ll miss you.