Chug-hug-hug-hug. My new-used VW Passat stalled out yet again as I tried desperately to get it going through the last stop sign on my drive home from work. Fortunately I had the closing shift, so there were few cars occupying the small-town suburban roads. I finally got the car started thanks to blind luck and prayer and arrived home without further incident. But I had to admit to myself that this was not working.
I was planning my move down to Florida in a few months, and my parents and I knew that I’d need a car for this move – Naples, Florida is not known for its public transportation or easy walkability. My dad, being the car guru and caring father that he is, wanted to ensure I had a safe car while I lived 1500 miles away. He found a like-new but used car that was in perfect condition and a great price, with only one catch – I’d have to learn how to manage the standard transmission. As he’d told me my whole life, though, that’s pretty much the only good way to learn. He learned himself with his first car.
My father drove the car off the lot and the next morning we headed over to our church parking lot – the very same place I learned to ride a two-wheeler bike at the age of four and an automatic car at age 16 – to practice.
“Just give it a little gas as you release a little on the clutch,” my dad told me, confidently.
I, very unconfidently, attempted to give a little gas and release a little on the clutch and immediately stalled out. How much is a little?
“Don’t do it too slow!” he said. “Oops, but that was too fast!”
My next ‘driving lesson’ with my mother went similarly. Both my parents had been driving standard transmission cars since their teens and early twenties, and the practice is such second nature that they had trouble thinking through their own processes to answer any of my questions.
I had some success in these two lessons, success in the way that luck and happenstance sometimes bring success, but I ultimately knew I still had no idea what I was doing. That night after work, my mom had driven me and the car to the busy afternoon mall so that I could get a little street action later at night with clear roads. As you can tell, it was not pretty.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results.”Albert Einstein, maybe
The next morning, I did what I should have done from the beginning and what any self-respecting millennial always knows to do first: I googled it.
Most of the sites were interesting and informative, but the clutch tip (pun obviously intended) was the “foolproof, trademarked Click and Clack technique for learning to drive standard…without having to spend $2,000 on a new clutch”. Yes, folks, Car Talk saved the day. And I can’t say it any better than they did, so here you go:
“With the car running, put one foot on the brake and the other on a clutch. Now, move the shift stick into first gear. Take your foot off the brake and just use the clutch. Release the clutch very slowly, until you find a point where something begins to happen. This is the engagement point of the clutch.
Without giving the vehicle any gas, continue to release the clutch very slowly, and see if you can get the car creeping along.”
Click and Clack claim it could take hours to learn to get the car started this way (a worthwhile trade to avoid destroying a new clutch), but for me this recognition and ultimate familiarity with the engagement point was all I needed. The rest of the shifting and driving was easy enough once the car was moving, and I continued to get better with practice. Hills and rain and intense traffic were pretty stressful for the first couple of months, but at least at that point I felt confident in what I was doing and in my improvement.
In conclusion, once you go standard you never go back (that’s how that saying goes, right?) – at least for me.
- It’s more fun.
- I get better gas mileage.
- I can now easily rent and drive cars in Europe.
- I can now drive any sort of getaway car as needed.
- I can’t get enough of the impressed and surprised reactions I get from the valet guys when they find out a pretty young [female] thang like myself can drive stick.*
Come on, guys – like it’s hard?
*You know, because pretty young females can’t do stuff, especially with cars. Unless you’re Megan Fox in Transformers. I’m basically Megan Fox in Transformers.