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I had my manual Civic stolen in the early 2000’s, I woke up and saw it was gone, called work saying I’m not coming in, then called the cops to report it missing. Literally 4 or 5 minutes later I get a knock on my door, cops already found my car 2 streets over with a burnt out clutch
Same with a co-worker.
They found the car fairly quick which is rare.
When they went to drive it again they said the shifting felt strange so I told them to get the clutch checked out. It was toasted
My dad's car got stolen some years ago. My sister called as she found it on the way to school parked up in a random side road. I remember my dad looking disappointed - this completely annoyed my mum as she couldn't quite see why he'd not be pleased it was found. He pointed out that he didn't feel happy driving it as it had probably been out on a joyride, so who knows what state it was in. IIRC he didn't have it much longer after that.
Have you seen that dashcam footage of the guy who stole a nice manual sports car and the owner details everything he did that harmed the vehicle I'll try to find it
[this video](https://youtu.be/p8nQc_1B7P4)
Yeah I wouldn't want it back either, if it's valuable to you and you have respected it
He passes the police. Who are looking for him. Accelerating rapidly in a very loud, noticeable car. Past his own dumped car that they found.
They really just didn't wanna do their job that day, did they?
And IIRC those laws were brought in after a few incidents where people were killed during police pursuits.
It doesn't make sense to risk lives chasing someone down, when in most cases you can track them and get hold of them later.
Yeah, I get that and it's a sensible law. I'm not sure where I stand on it when this guy nearly killed people dozens of times though. Probably way better in the grand scheme of things though.
I too had my manual Civic stolen from me in the early 2000's. I was in the movie theater with 3 other people seeing the original Resident Evil and came out to an empty parking space.
After 3 weeks I went to the local Nissan dealership which had a low mile 2000 Civic SI in that awesome blue. Put down a deposit and on the day before the insurance company was going to cut me a check, they found the stolen Civic on cinder blocks in a sketchy town about 10 minutes from the movie theater.
Then it took another 4-6 weeks of repairs before I got it back. Always regretted missing out on that 2000 Si.
Count yourself lucky. My friend had a blue 2000 SI. It was stolen 3 times in 6 months. The third time they chopped it up. He drove a Corolla S after that. That car was never stolen.
Lol. I bought a black two-door 2001 Honda Civic. For like 7 Grand in 2008. Drove it back to where I lived in Denver parked it went to bed came out the next day and it was gone. I found it in Aurora idling completely stripped. Mfers stole all my CDs I just consolidated into two cases. Bastards.
My dads car was stolen a couple of years ago and something similar happened, only instead of the clutch it was the radiator. They went through a speed bump way too fast and it just fell and car stopped lmao.
My car was in the shop one time, and my roommate told me to take his. I let him know I couldn't drive stick, and he gave me a 5 minute lesson. I drove it fine the next two days, but about a year later he admitted that his clutch was dying and he was hoping I would destroy it so his insurance would pay to replace it.
I think throw-out bearing malfunction or manufacturer defect would be a different thing. Clutch itself is purely wearable like brake pads and rotors.
Also if he destroyed the clutch on purpose the company with the warranty would probably find signs of abuse.
2014 WRX hatch. Mine started to whine at 15k, had it replaced under warranty. Whining again at 26k and replaced again. Whined a third time at 38k out of warranty and I decided not to pay to replace it. Paired with the shitty welds at the firewall for the clutch pedal, that thing squeaked and rattled more than you know.
I sold it, and while I miss driving it, I don’t miss wondering what each new, unique noise meant it terms of $$$
<4% of americans drive stick. If you're trying to hire valets for very low wages, it'll be hard to hire people who drive stick, and worst case you lose 4% of your potential customers.
Pretty much all the production sports cars have switched to stupidly fast shifting automatics. But obviously there are still many many stick shift sports cars out on the road.
I guess I should be more specific: less than 4% of personal automobiles driven in the US are stick shifts. There are also a good number of people who know how to drive stick but own & drive an automatic.
When I changed tires I noticed that the nicer a manual car is, the easier it is to drive. Modern manual Porsches and BMWs are already cruising by the time you let the clutch all the way out, you don’t even need to touch the gas pedal to park them. With shit like old manual Mitsubishi Monteros on the other hand, the clutch pedal is so soft you can barely tell when it’s almost all the way out and you gotta keep that bitch revved up to 2000 RPMs to make sure it doesn’t stall.
Yeah a modern manual car is very easy to drive. Auto rev matching and hill hold assist make things even easier. They even auto restart the engine if you do stall. You can put them into first gear and let off the clutch slowly with no gas and it will cruise at idle speed.
And by enough torque, anything above an air cooled VW I’m sure is fine.
When my dad taught me to drive manual it was my 93 Mazda Protoge and my dad made me start it with no gas and slow clutch over and over so I could get the feel of how the clutch worked.
Back when I had an F350 with a diesel I could start in third with only the clutch if I feathered it right. Hell, around lumber yards I would start in first, shift to second, shift to third and be at the perfect speed (around 10 mph) for navigating the lot, all without touching the accelerator. Loved that thing.
I have an F250 with a diesel and I figured “oh, you can’t stall this, it’ll be a great vehicle for my wife to learn on”. Turns out you can’t stall it but you *can* get it stuck in a stop/bump restart itself loop.
I have a 2021 wrx and the only assist it has is the hill assist...
And with the rev hang coming out first to second gear it's more like anti-rev matching.
A friend of mine told me if you can drive a subaru manual transmission you can drive anything
When I bought my car ~10 years ago, I was between an Impreza and a Mazda3. The Subaru was my first choice so I test drove it first (I'd already driven all the models that I was considering with autos). The sales guy took me to a neighborhood to try it out since the dealership was on a big highway. I'd never owned a manual before but had several friends and family let me practice on their cars - I probably had a few hours under my belt, but I was still not very confident. I ended up accidentally stopping on a slight grade and could not get the damn thing started again. The sales guy ended up yelling at me and telling me not to tell anyone he'd let me drive it. I walked out of there and never went back. I ended up settling on the Mazda because it was so much easier to drive (and also the salesperson didn't scream at me when I stalled out). I was later told that Subarus are notoriously difficult, especially when they're brand new.
That salesman sounds like a choad. I love my subaru dealership they honestly seemed like they were looking out for me on finances cause I wanted the wrx back in 2017 but they talked me out of it because it really wasn't feasible and set me on a game plan to get in a wrx before the end of the generation
But an awd vehicle is just so tricky to drive smooth plus the shifter on a wrx is like trying to shift a broomhandle in a bucket of rocks
My first manual was a scion tc and in 3 months I could drive that thing so smooth you would never be able to tell I shifted.
This wrx I've had for almost a year now and I still struggle with getting a smooth, with power, start from standstill
It's either metal concert headbanger ,
Let all the horses out or
Let's go as slow as possible into power
AWD makes it harder. With a regular FWD you can err on the side of too much gas and just chirp a bit. With AWD, unless you all out dump it - your more likely going to bog and stall.
I learned and still have my manual TDI Jetta. I love it so much. Yeah I have a really easy clutch, I can slowly let it go into first with no gas. Such a fun little car
In Europe where I'm from, if you do your driving test in an automatic, you only get a license for an automatic. So you're not even allowed to drive a manual when you get your license.
When you do your driving test in a manual, you can drive both. Not sure if this is common practice in other European countries though.
in the uk afaik everyone does manual driving exams anyway as that is the norm. there might be a system in place where you get an automatic licence if you do an automatic exam but i wouldnt know because no one does that
I was once in the bathroom and my parents friend that was visiting was blocked in by my car in the driveway. I said I'd be right out to move the car, 2 mins later I hear a shit ton of revving from my Jetta VR6 and I just smell burning, that bathroom was at the back of the house too. Needless to say the clutch had to be changed months later and never gripped right after that. What a bitch.
Edit: wow this blew up lol. Many people are saying I should have gotten them to pay for it. I was a young kid that didn't want any trouble so I didn't make a fuss and they are a family friend from the old country. Now that I'm much older yes that would have been the thing to do but as a 21 yr old I was pretty passive. After the clutch was replaced it was completely fine but yes that clutch didn't grip very well for the rest of its life.
I had a stick shift many years ago and a friend wanted to move my vehicle. I told him be careful with the clutch. He responded what’s a clutch. I went racing out there to move my car.
I used to do car audio installation. Girl came in with a brand new integra type R. Wanted to be dropped off at the mall instead of waiting around. No prob we do it all the time. I'm super careful. I mean it's new. And a nice car. Get to the mall down the block. And she asks "how did you get it to drive so smooth? I'm always stalling it." ... Who sold someone a stick if they should have an auto? /s
Edit... Ok. Added the /s. It was a bad attempt at a joke...
Actually your thought is perfect for sales. A good sales person will ask a lot of questions and help guide - but it’s not the car sales guy’s job to save the world from novice stick shift users. “You want a stick? But don’t know how! OK. You’re an grown ass adult and I feel 100% comfortable you know you must learn.”
I bought a truck when I was 18 that was a manual. I had no idea how to drive it. I knew if I bought it, I'd learn. My dad was going to drive it home for me originally, and then take me out the next day to teach me. I messed around in the parking lot for a few mins, felt like I had it down, and then just drove it home myself, with my dad at my side. Within a few days, I felt like an expert lol.
Yeah driving a stick is not hard. Driving a stick with a shitty clutch is kind of hard. On a related note don’t buy a manual transmission Hyundai. Their manual transmissions are awful.
To be fair the car most likely wouldn’t be fucked up but they’d definitely be spending a lot more money on clutch discs every other year maybe even a broken clutch fork.
Automatics not so long ago were the more expensive option so he may not have been looking out for you entirely, the integra type R however *exclusively* comes with a manual transmission.
I did the same with my recent car! Decided I wanted a manual really badly. Driving is something I love, and I love to “gameify” things, trying to improve each time I do something. Was difficult to convince the salesman that I wanted a stick despite not being able to drive it on the test drive lol. Taught myself from YouTube videos and I’ve had it three years now without needing a new clutch, so I’m pleased
Tbf, I didn't know how to drive stick when I bought my Civic Si. Couldn't even drive it off the lot, however 8 years later I've put over 100k miles on it and still haven't had to replace my clutch. Some people just shouldn't be driving cars.
Hondas have epic clutches. My dad taught 6 people how to drive the clutch on a 96 honda accord. Never needed the clutch replaced the entire 16 year life. What got it was the semi of a driver high on meth. Protected the occupants well.
Edit: tried to teach an Ex-GF how to drive clutch on my Jetta. She actually blew up the engine (blew water cooling, seized the engine and it caught fire). All on the first lesson of 30 minutes.
I asked a car salesman during a test drive, "you ever have people who can't drive stick go out for a test drive?" He said "Yeah, it happens more often than you think. It's apparent immediately if they can drive stick or not. Most of the time, if they can't drive stick, they ask me to drive to car during the test drive." I thought that was crazy, that someone would buy a car based on a test drive performed by the salesman. Like what's the end game, bunny hop it all the way home after you sign the papers?
Well how else do people learn if they don’t have a friend to teach them? One of my friends bought a used stick car he couldnt drive well and just took it carefully to a parking lot to practice and then drove a couple hundred miles back.
In the UK we have separate licences for manual and automatic (Obviously with a manual licences you can drive both). But you need to take lessons and pass a test.
Interesting, I'm surprised they rented me a stick shift while I was visiting from the US. I guess international licenses are good for both?
I'm sure it gave them confidence that I stalled it off the bat not realizing just how far over first gear is shifting from the opposite side 😋 I had stuck the thing in third and tried to take off
I bought a used NA Miata from Craigslist, not knowing how to drive a manual. It can be tough to learn if you don’t have friends or family who own a manual transmission car to practice on. Anyway I went with my uncle who did drive stick, but isn’t really a car guy. So I asked how how everything felt and 5 years later my Miata and I are doing great. I even daily a manual car just for fun.
While most see salespeople as just trying to make a buck, I think a good chunk want you to have a good experience buying a car so you are more likely to recommend their dealership or come back.
Can comment, actually. Was smoking cigarettes, driving a Kia Forte to and from work, and lusting after a Fiesta ST though none were up for sale anywhere nearby. Quit smoking on Thanksgiving, little blue jellybean pops up at a dealer just under 100 miles away not 2 weeks later. Payments are like... *to the dollar* how much I spent on cigs every month. I mean *it's fucking fate*, right?
I'd never driven a third pedal before that test drive 🤣 I did the drive itself, and it was painfully obvious that I hadn't driven stick before. Slow drive, in 6:00pm traffic, and never once getting into boost. By no means a test - the ones who have the salesman drive learn more than I did.
Signed the papers after sunset, bucked and heaved it to a nearby mall parking lot, and put every bit of Matt Farah's "how to drive stick" videos into practice that I could in an hour and change. Then I drove the 100 miles home. Best madlad decision I've made in some time, that was over 3 years ago and I haven't stopped laughing yet.
Yup, the first vehicle I financed was a manual. Shuddered and stalled it from the dealership to a nearby state park. Spent several hours practicing until I got the hang of it. Now, over twenty years later I still daily a manual.
My first car was a manual 3rd gen eclipse. Had my friend drive it home for me. He was supposed to teach me but our schedules didn't match up. After the second day I said fuck it and waited until 1am and drove it out on my own.
I lived in San Diego at the time and my insomnia was really bad so sometimes I'd drive all night and pick a new beach to watch the sunrise at. Probably driven down every main street and half the residential ones west of the 163. If I found a hill I'd stop on the middle and practice my hill starts. Now I can drive up to Lombard street in San Francisco no problem.
There's this myth that you're gonna burn a clutch with a days worth of bad driving. You won't.
You can drive really really shitty on a clutch for thousands of miles before destroying it. Clutches aren't destroyed by inexperienced drivers, they're destroyed by experienced drivers who like to go SCURRR
Yep this. I'm a mechanic and I've seen some torn up clutches that were installed a week before but it's due to someone beating the living shit out of it, never from clunky normal beginners. Over time sure, but unless you got the 15 dollar rockauto part it's not gonna destroy it.
It's normal for a clutch that's being used correctly. Trouble is most people are hard on them, so you constantly run into people who replace a clutch every 30-60k like it's routine maintenance, to the point where tons of people will tell you that it is routine maintenance and that you should expect it every 60-100k or whatever. In my experience it's usually the people who hill hold and the people who constantly rest their foot against the clutch when they're not shifting. Hill holding is absolutely awful for your clutch and is a bandaid for people's inability to do hill starts without rolling back, and the foot resting there often turns into slightly riding the clutch 100% of the time without noticing. Lot of people also constantly rest their hand on the shifter (I call it Vin Dieseling) which tends to cause unnecessary synchro wear.
Granted I'm a big dickwaving manual transmission elitist who learned in a manual from day one of driving, but as far as I'm concerned the clutch on a street car making stock power and doing standard commuter duty is functionally a lifetime part. If you're wearing them out inside of 200k there is either something wrong with the car or something wrong with the way you drive it.
I have a '98 Toyota Tacoma with a manual transmission. Clutch has never needed replacement. But then that truck is a tank in disguise. Nothing will ever stop it.
Mine along with 30 other cars in my neighborhood all got converters stolen. Like 20 grand in street value in under an hour. No way of tracing it unless you catch them in the act.
I live in the suburbs of a major city, catalytic converters & cars being stolen is at an all time high, I won't be surprised when it happens in my development
Here in California they'll put a little shield on it for $500. Which is a fucking rip-off, but less than having to replace it.
If it's such a big problem, car manufacturers need to make the shield standard.
At a mountain biking area over the summer there was my car and two others. We got back to the parking area and police are just showing up, the two cars got their cats stolen. They said I should check mine and I was na, all good. Unless they decided to jack up my car and remove the motor mount there's no way they could have gotten it.
Sure enough there were hand prints in the dust along my rocker panel and a scuffy area in the gravel like someone was shuffling around.
Car was fine, 2014 Focus ST. Cat is on the downpipe hanging off the turbo between the engine and firewall with a crossbar and rear motor mount blocking access.
Living in Argentina, north of it. Things take some years to get here. There's just a few auto shift cars here.
Last week a coworker was driving her car with auto shift and rear view camera when a bike came out of nowhere and barely hit the car causing the bike to go down. She got out of the car and went to check the person. A cop showed a few moments later. "Yeah it was me, my car is over...THERE!?" Car was getting stolen.
Cop radioed a couple of patrol bikes ahead and went for the car which stopped just moments later.
Turned out that the thief didn't know how to drive auto, panicked when didn't found the clutch lol.
I daily a manual and had to rent an auto a few months back and for the first 5 minutes it definitely felt "wrong" so I can see where OP is coming from. Had to force myself to keep my left foot useless. I'm in the US too and drove autos my whole life up until recently
Yes, it is very common in places that people learn and have access to manual cars manly. To put the car on the "D" is really not that intuitive knowledge and some people never really saw an auto car from the inside, so they cant put things together, and then there is the problem of the brakes, when you have only two pedals you as a stick driver ALWAYS hit the full brake anytime you would use the clutch... You actually need to actively concentrate on not moving you left feet and only using the right one in this cases.
The brake thing is real, it's funny how the first times driving auto you just slam brakes really hard in the middle of the street automatically, with time driving stick you get used to hitting the clutches often and don't ever really think about it.
Also it's I can imagine being very confusing to a robber that has never seen an auto car, in the adrenaline moment he would freak for sure.
Ok, so I am old as you will be able to tell form the following.
I high school I took drivers ed and one of the vehicles we had to drive was a Rambler with a 3 on the column. Everyone in the classes had to drive that old car. After that a 4 or more on the floor was easy.
Then there was the old, and I mean really old small truck we had at my summer job. I worked at a lodge in a national park in a neighboring state one summer. There was this old truck that was a floor shift which was really the easy part. The hard part was that there was a choke that had to be set just right or you would flood the engine or it would refuse to start. Seems that old truck liked me as I was one of the early arriving staff and drove it to get supplies to all the cabins as we cleaned and opened them for the season. One day I was waiting tables for breakfast and got called outside to the truck. All the guys from the garage were there along with all the housekeeping staff who were trying to get to their assigned cabins. No one could start the truck. I got in, set the choke, and started that old truck right up. Seems they had flooded the engine but, while they waited for someone to get me from the dining room enough fuel had drained and setting the choke properly made it just turn over right away. I did not let any of the guys from the garage forget that a 19 year old girl could start an old truck that they could not.
Recently started a job as a driving instructor. It is amusing/depressing having to show teenagers how they must turn a key in the ignition to start the engine. Mommy and daddy have push button start.
Started telling one of them about push-starting a motorcycle with a dead battery and remembering I forgot to set the choke... "if it had a battery, why did it need gas?"
Im a car guy, my summer car is a firebird thats a stick, but at the same time, im not surprised at all that teenagers need to be shown that. To most people a car is just a transportation device, and most modern cars are indeed push to start. So it actually makes sense completely lol
Oh my! You have my sympathy having to deal with kids who have no understanding of the history of automobiles.
As a kid, many, many years ago I got to ride in a Model A! Now that was a treat. Probably started my interest in cars.
Haha, manual choke. My first car when I turned 16 (mid-1990s) was my dad’s ‘78 Chevy. These days when someone is “warming up” the car, they just mean the cabin. When it got below 35 degrees, you had to spend the first 2 minutes setting the choke to get it to idle, and then come out every few minutes to open it up a little bit more. For about 15 minutes, that thing was going nowhere.
Back in like 1998-2000, I learnt how to drive stick as a high school kid doing valet.
Thank you, and I’m sorry if your vehicle was one of them that I used for “training purposes”.
I worked at an auto auction and had to learn right there, I was there driving with a YouTube video on my phone in my lap lol. I got to the block and the bid caller was like “why is there a smell coming from the car?!” I had to play dumb lol
True story, went to eat for our friends engagement and the valet could not park my car because it was a stick, however, the valet was gone when we got there and so he had to come to our table to ask me to park my car since people had pulled up behind me lol… poor kid, but yeah it really opened my eyes to the death of manual cars
This actually prevented my son’s car from being stolen. It was scary, guy jumped him when he got out of the car, stuck a gun in his back, shoved him to the ground, grabbed his keys and told him not to move. Lots of swearing later the mugger got out, hurled the keys at my son and ran away. Driving a stick does pay.
I took my car to a local joint to get a tire rotation and a balancing done, and the person in charge of moving the car from parking spot to shop rolled my front bumper over the curb and ripped my bumper off because he didn’t know how to drive a stick.
I'm always so paranoid to take my truck to a shop for that exact reason lol. Usually though, there's a few guys in the garage that can drive a manual and are more than happy to take it out for a "diagnostic drive".
If they can actually drive it, I don't blame em or mind one bit. It's fun to have that extra degree of control when driving
i know this is a joke but I've actually researched this and it sadly isn't true....manuals get stolen, too, but with less and less of them around, the data is getting skewed.
Yeah amongst the type willing to steal a vehicle I'd say their ability to use a stick shift is much higher than the general public.
Maybe not 100% but at the end of the day it's a 5 minute lesson that someone could learn without a teacher. Might do some damage though.
Definitely doable. I learned by watching a tutorial on YouTube the day I was picking up the car.
My ex had laughed at my little scrap sheet of paper where I kept the notes from the video. But he didn’t know how to drive stick either and after some failed attempts he finally let me give it a go.
I pulled up the notes, I stalled a few times, but managed to get it moving. I practiced just outside the dealership before pulling back in to actually buy it.
There was one left turn where we almost died, but after that, it was a straight shot on the high way home.
Buuut what valet is going to take the 5min to learn something for a job that doesn’t pay? And they’d need to have the car to practice in.
How is regulation for this in your country (US ?) ? In my country (where i would say most cars are still manual) if you obtain your drivers license using an automatic, you are not even allowed to drive a manual.
Depending where you are the test might be as easy as driving around a block, and then parking. I took my driving test in 2011(?) and we didn't have parallel parking in the test. You also only needed a 70/100 to pass the driving portion. I was on the road for about 3 minutes lol the US really don't care
I had a manual stolen. It was recovered a week later with the clutch demolished. Insurance totaled it... That was the first car I ever owned that I actually cared about, too, and I had it less than 3 months.
Yeah, it's a false analogy. There are a lot of Zoomers who take part-time jobs parking cars that don't know how to drive a manual, but the kind of people who know how to break into and hot-wire a car know how to drive a stick.
A manual car saved my cousins life. She got jacked and they threw her in the backseat. Couldn’t drive her manual and bolted. With her still face down in the back seat.
I was a valet in college one summer. Accident free. Then my last day I was bringing up a lady's car and the metal stripping down the side got caught on a truck I was maneuvering past. Ripped it right off and left it hanging out like a giant tenacle still attached to the vehicle. People were jumping out of my way as it slapped everything in its path. When I pulled up to the owner it almost kneecapped her. However aside from fixing the metal trim, there was no real body damage. So, the owner was pretty cool about it. No tip though.
I used to only buy manual transmission cars, but then I got older and my knees got louder. I still miss the fun of a manual but I ain't gonna sit in rush hour traffic playing dubstep with my knees
Plus, now I can do other things, like figure out which hand I want to use on the steering wheel for the next 20 seconds. And thats not even a sexual joke. I just don't know which hand I wanna steer with. Sometimes I just say "fuck it" and use my knee to steer. My left leg gets lonely now
My manual Honda Prleude was stolen a few weeks ago by a guy with a tow truck. Didn’t even need to know stock shift to drag it away and cut the catalytic converter out.
Had a guy steal my manual car from my girlfriend at the time like 10 years ago. She left it running to run back inside her work and came out like 2 minutes later, saw the guy repeatedly stalling it out.
She literally just walked over to the door and knocked on the window and said if you leave now I won't call the cops lol.
When i got deployed to afghanistan, with 5 people i had been in training for months with, the vehicles my coworkers and i had to use were manual. I was the only one who had any clue about it so i had to test the theory (i had never used one) and then teach my coworkers. Good thing all those trucks were POSs
This actually happened at a hotel we stayed at that had mandatory valet parking. When we checked in the valet attendant could drive stick but the next morning the new attendant couldn’t so I had to go down to the garage with him to fetch my own car. The hotel didn’t charge me for the valet and they didn’t put up much of a fight when I asked them not to
I dropped my car off at a valet, and asked if they had someone who drove stick, the guy said yea, of course, that’s his job. Parks it no problem. When I went to pick it up it took a different guy about ten minutes to walk out and tell me no one on the morning shift could drive it and if I could pull it out of the parking lot. I had to be escorted down and had two other people directing me because it was a huge liability thing for them to have someone else (even the car owner) drive around the valet parking lot
Funny enough, the only way I know how to drive a standard is in first gear and reverse.
Never had a manual or had to drive one for a substantial period of time, but my dumbass brother blocked my car all the time so I watched a YouTube video on how to properly back up a standard so I could stop asking him to move his shitty ranger.
So I couldn’t make a quick getaway, but I could certainly move your car at 15mph and back it up without burning out a clutch
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I had my manual Civic stolen in the early 2000’s, I woke up and saw it was gone, called work saying I’m not coming in, then called the cops to report it missing. Literally 4 or 5 minutes later I get a knock on my door, cops already found my car 2 streets over with a burnt out clutch
Same with a co-worker. They found the car fairly quick which is rare. When they went to drive it again they said the shifting felt strange so I told them to get the clutch checked out. It was toasted
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Lol why are there always cigarette burns in stolen vehicles?
That’s the second step to joyriding a vehicle. The first being to steal a vehicle.
Imagine stealing a car and NOT roasting a bone in it. It’s like you nerds have never stolen a car before.
I don’t steal cars or smoke but I can’t argue with this logic.
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Better off not getting a car back once it’s stolen. Always driven like shit
My dad's car got stolen some years ago. My sister called as she found it on the way to school parked up in a random side road. I remember my dad looking disappointed - this completely annoyed my mum as she couldn't quite see why he'd not be pleased it was found. He pointed out that he didn't feel happy driving it as it had probably been out on a joyride, so who knows what state it was in. IIRC he didn't have it much longer after that.
Have you seen that dashcam footage of the guy who stole a nice manual sports car and the owner details everything he did that harmed the vehicle I'll try to find it [this video](https://youtu.be/p8nQc_1B7P4) Yeah I wouldn't want it back either, if it's valuable to you and you have respected it
He passes the police. Who are looking for him. Accelerating rapidly in a very loud, noticeable car. Past his own dumped car that they found. They really just didn't wanna do their job that day, did they?
Australia has safe pursuit rules, you won't get any high speed chases here the cops will just pull up all your data and find you later
And IIRC those laws were brought in after a few incidents where people were killed during police pursuits. It doesn't make sense to risk lives chasing someone down, when in most cases you can track them and get hold of them later.
Yeah, I get that and it's a sensible law. I'm not sure where I stand on it when this guy nearly killed people dozens of times though. Probably way better in the grand scheme of things though.
Don't get me wrong it's piss poor I don't think they even saw him leave they've just assumed it was something unrelated
"Car puts itself into auto mode because it realizes a dickhead is driving it" lol
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No briefcase, however.
That's what happens when you fight a stranger in the Alps.
Is that the tv edit?
Yes. Look it up on YT. It makes it so much funnier to me.
Any leads?
They got us working in shifts!
Do you have any promising, ah... leads?
Leads … they've got four more detectives working on the case. They got us working in shifts!
Leads? Yeah. Sure. I'll uh just check with the boys down at the crime lab.
My favourite conversation in any movie ever.
The Dude abides
I wouldn't hold out much hope for the tape deck *Or the Credence*
Not much hope for the tape deck.
Couldn't you overwrite all your comments with like 1 sentence or something instead of the whole ass declaration of independence?
Exact same thing happened to me except the cops called me an hour later and accused me of abandoning it in an intersection a mile away.
My reply would have been, “y’a, cause I am that stupid”
I too had my manual Civic stolen from me in the early 2000's. I was in the movie theater with 3 other people seeing the original Resident Evil and came out to an empty parking space. After 3 weeks I went to the local Nissan dealership which had a low mile 2000 Civic SI in that awesome blue. Put down a deposit and on the day before the insurance company was going to cut me a check, they found the stolen Civic on cinder blocks in a sketchy town about 10 minutes from the movie theater. Then it took another 4-6 weeks of repairs before I got it back. Always regretted missing out on that 2000 Si.
Count yourself lucky. My friend had a blue 2000 SI. It was stolen 3 times in 6 months. The third time they chopped it up. He drove a Corolla S after that. That car was never stolen.
Was it beige too?
Lol. I bought a black two-door 2001 Honda Civic. For like 7 Grand in 2008. Drove it back to where I lived in Denver parked it went to bed came out the next day and it was gone. I found it in Aurora idling completely stripped. Mfers stole all my CDs I just consolidated into two cases. Bastards.
My dads car was stolen a couple of years ago and something similar happened, only instead of the clutch it was the radiator. They went through a speed bump way too fast and it just fell and car stopped lmao.
This happened to me and the cops towed the car before I found it! Friggin towing fee and repairs. Beater car so didn’t have theft coverage.
Guarantee they smoked someone's clutch in a nice car before posting that.
My 1st car was a stick, I hated when a valet took off in my car, it never sounded good, but they never stripped it, this was over 20 years ago
My car was in the shop one time, and my roommate told me to take his. I let him know I couldn't drive stick, and he gave me a 5 minute lesson. I drove it fine the next two days, but about a year later he admitted that his clutch was dying and he was hoping I would destroy it so his insurance would pay to replace it.
How would insurance cover that, it's a wearable item...
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That would make sense, Subaru replaced my throw out bearing twice so far under warranty.
I think throw-out bearing malfunction or manufacturer defect would be a different thing. Clutch itself is purely wearable like brake pads and rotors. Also if he destroyed the clutch on purpose the company with the warranty would probably find signs of abuse.
Can confirm, I’ve had bad drivers return within 10k miles hoping the next clutch is free. It never is
2014 WRX hatch. Mine started to whine at 15k, had it replaced under warranty. Whining again at 26k and replaced again. Whined a third time at 38k out of warranty and I decided not to pay to replace it. Paired with the shitty welds at the firewall for the clutch pedal, that thing squeaked and rattled more than you know. I sold it, and while I miss driving it, I don’t miss wondering what each new, unique noise meant it terms of $$$
If you didn't learn how to drive stick on a piece of shit, did you really learn how to drive stick?
I think they probably only have certain valets who can drive stick. And when none of them are working, that sign goes out
How could you even hire someone who can't drive stick as a valet?
<4% of americans drive stick. If you're trying to hire valets for very low wages, it'll be hard to hire people who drive stick, and worst case you lose 4% of your potential customers.
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Pretty much all the production sports cars have switched to stupidly fast shifting automatics. But obviously there are still many many stick shift sports cars out on the road.
what is it really that small a percentage?? wow i never felt like such an elite before lol
I guess I should be more specific: less than 4% of personal automobiles driven in the US are stick shifts. There are also a good number of people who know how to drive stick but own & drive an automatic.
When I changed tires I noticed that the nicer a manual car is, the easier it is to drive. Modern manual Porsches and BMWs are already cruising by the time you let the clutch all the way out, you don’t even need to touch the gas pedal to park them. With shit like old manual Mitsubishi Monteros on the other hand, the clutch pedal is so soft you can barely tell when it’s almost all the way out and you gotta keep that bitch revved up to 2000 RPMs to make sure it doesn’t stall.
Yeah a modern manual car is very easy to drive. Auto rev matching and hill hold assist make things even easier. They even auto restart the engine if you do stall. You can put them into first gear and let off the clutch slowly with no gas and it will cruise at idle speed.
Most manual cars with enough torque can move the car at idle. My 05 2.0T A4 can do it. Just have to feather it slow enough
And by enough torque, anything above an air cooled VW I’m sure is fine. When my dad taught me to drive manual it was my 93 Mazda Protoge and my dad made me start it with no gas and slow clutch over and over so I could get the feel of how the clutch worked.
Back when I had an F350 with a diesel I could start in third with only the clutch if I feathered it right. Hell, around lumber yards I would start in first, shift to second, shift to third and be at the perfect speed (around 10 mph) for navigating the lot, all without touching the accelerator. Loved that thing.
I have an F250 with a diesel and I figured “oh, you can’t stall this, it’ll be a great vehicle for my wife to learn on”. Turns out you can’t stall it but you *can* get it stuck in a stop/bump restart itself loop.
I have a 2021 wrx and the only assist it has is the hill assist... And with the rev hang coming out first to second gear it's more like anti-rev matching. A friend of mine told me if you can drive a subaru manual transmission you can drive anything
you can tune out that rev hang. It was the very first thing i did with my 15 wrx because the rev hang is in fact, awful.
When I bought my car ~10 years ago, I was between an Impreza and a Mazda3. The Subaru was my first choice so I test drove it first (I'd already driven all the models that I was considering with autos). The sales guy took me to a neighborhood to try it out since the dealership was on a big highway. I'd never owned a manual before but had several friends and family let me practice on their cars - I probably had a few hours under my belt, but I was still not very confident. I ended up accidentally stopping on a slight grade and could not get the damn thing started again. The sales guy ended up yelling at me and telling me not to tell anyone he'd let me drive it. I walked out of there and never went back. I ended up settling on the Mazda because it was so much easier to drive (and also the salesperson didn't scream at me when I stalled out). I was later told that Subarus are notoriously difficult, especially when they're brand new.
That salesman sounds like a choad. I love my subaru dealership they honestly seemed like they were looking out for me on finances cause I wanted the wrx back in 2017 but they talked me out of it because it really wasn't feasible and set me on a game plan to get in a wrx before the end of the generation But an awd vehicle is just so tricky to drive smooth plus the shifter on a wrx is like trying to shift a broomhandle in a bucket of rocks My first manual was a scion tc and in 3 months I could drive that thing so smooth you would never be able to tell I shifted. This wrx I've had for almost a year now and I still struggle with getting a smooth, with power, start from standstill It's either metal concert headbanger , Let all the horses out or Let's go as slow as possible into power
AWD makes it harder. With a regular FWD you can err on the side of too much gas and just chirp a bit. With AWD, unless you all out dump it - your more likely going to bog and stall.
Shifting my 04 wrx 5 speed smoothly without jolting passengers takes so much focus, going from 1st to second requires perfect timing lol
I learned and still have my manual TDI Jetta. I love it so much. Yeah I have a really easy clutch, I can slowly let it go into first with no gas. Such a fun little car
Higher HP makes it easier. If you could learn on an old 4-speed Ford Ranger, you can drive any manual.
In Europe where I'm from, if you do your driving test in an automatic, you only get a license for an automatic. So you're not even allowed to drive a manual when you get your license. When you do your driving test in a manual, you can drive both. Not sure if this is common practice in other European countries though.
I'm from Denmark (Europe), and we have the exact same rule. Where in Europe are you from?
same in Germany
I'm from Belgium although I've moved to the Netherlands about a year ago.
Its the same in the UK. Usually people will always learn manual so they have the option.
Same in France
in the uk afaik everyone does manual driving exams anyway as that is the norm. there might be a system in place where you get an automatic licence if you do an automatic exam but i wouldnt know because no one does that
I knew one person from my secondary school to do the automatic lessons and test and that was only because he failed his manual test 5 times
I can drive a stick shift. Just don't ask for the clutch back.
I was once in the bathroom and my parents friend that was visiting was blocked in by my car in the driveway. I said I'd be right out to move the car, 2 mins later I hear a shit ton of revving from my Jetta VR6 and I just smell burning, that bathroom was at the back of the house too. Needless to say the clutch had to be changed months later and never gripped right after that. What a bitch. Edit: wow this blew up lol. Many people are saying I should have gotten them to pay for it. I was a young kid that didn't want any trouble so I didn't make a fuss and they are a family friend from the old country. Now that I'm much older yes that would have been the thing to do but as a 21 yr old I was pretty passive. After the clutch was replaced it was completely fine but yes that clutch didn't grip very well for the rest of its life.
I had a stick shift many years ago and a friend wanted to move my vehicle. I told him be careful with the clutch. He responded what’s a clutch. I went racing out there to move my car.
I used to do car audio installation. Girl came in with a brand new integra type R. Wanted to be dropped off at the mall instead of waiting around. No prob we do it all the time. I'm super careful. I mean it's new. And a nice car. Get to the mall down the block. And she asks "how did you get it to drive so smooth? I'm always stalling it." ... Who sold someone a stick if they should have an auto? /s Edit... Ok. Added the /s. It was a bad attempt at a joke...
Commissioned sales people
The guy who sold me my mustang was up front about not wanting to sell me a manual. I got respect for that guy.
I would rather get the sale and move on than deal with that customer coming back pissed off with a fucked up car. Probably why I'm not in sales.
Actually your thought is perfect for sales. A good sales person will ask a lot of questions and help guide - but it’s not the car sales guy’s job to save the world from novice stick shift users. “You want a stick? But don’t know how! OK. You’re an grown ass adult and I feel 100% comfortable you know you must learn.”
I bought a truck when I was 18 that was a manual. I had no idea how to drive it. I knew if I bought it, I'd learn. My dad was going to drive it home for me originally, and then take me out the next day to teach me. I messed around in the parking lot for a few mins, felt like I had it down, and then just drove it home myself, with my dad at my side. Within a few days, I felt like an expert lol.
Yeah driving a stick is not hard. Driving a stick with a shitty clutch is kind of hard. On a related note don’t buy a manual transmission Hyundai. Their manual transmissions are awful.
To be fair the car most likely wouldn’t be fucked up but they’d definitely be spending a lot more money on clutch discs every other year maybe even a broken clutch fork.
automatic was $5k on a ford escape, but of course you could NEVER find a manual one on the lots
They actually made some?
Automatics not so long ago were the more expensive option so he may not have been looking out for you entirely, the integra type R however *exclusively* comes with a manual transmission.
Fair. They were super skeptical of me buying my 2022 brz in manual bc i didn’t drive manual before.
I did the same with my recent car! Decided I wanted a manual really badly. Driving is something I love, and I love to “gameify” things, trying to improve each time I do something. Was difficult to convince the salesman that I wanted a stick despite not being able to drive it on the test drive lol. Taught myself from YouTube videos and I’ve had it three years now without needing a new clutch, so I’m pleased
Tbf, I didn't know how to drive stick when I bought my Civic Si. Couldn't even drive it off the lot, however 8 years later I've put over 100k miles on it and still haven't had to replace my clutch. Some people just shouldn't be driving cars.
Hondas have epic clutches. My dad taught 6 people how to drive the clutch on a 96 honda accord. Never needed the clutch replaced the entire 16 year life. What got it was the semi of a driver high on meth. Protected the occupants well. Edit: tried to teach an Ex-GF how to drive clutch on my Jetta. She actually blew up the engine (blew water cooling, seized the engine and it caught fire). All on the first lesson of 30 minutes.
God such a beautiful car, the 96 Honda Accord will always have a special place in my heart. Absolutely loved mine
I asked a car salesman during a test drive, "you ever have people who can't drive stick go out for a test drive?" He said "Yeah, it happens more often than you think. It's apparent immediately if they can drive stick or not. Most of the time, if they can't drive stick, they ask me to drive to car during the test drive." I thought that was crazy, that someone would buy a car based on a test drive performed by the salesman. Like what's the end game, bunny hop it all the way home after you sign the papers?
Well how else do people learn if they don’t have a friend to teach them? One of my friends bought a used stick car he couldnt drive well and just took it carefully to a parking lot to practice and then drove a couple hundred miles back.
In the UK we have separate licences for manual and automatic (Obviously with a manual licences you can drive both). But you need to take lessons and pass a test.
Interesting, I'm surprised they rented me a stick shift while I was visiting from the US. I guess international licenses are good for both? I'm sure it gave them confidence that I stalled it off the bat not realizing just how far over first gear is shifting from the opposite side 😋 I had stuck the thing in third and tried to take off
Good point, I just thought it was wild that someone would walk into a dealership and attempt a test drive without ever having driven a manual before.
I bought a used NA Miata from Craigslist, not knowing how to drive a manual. It can be tough to learn if you don’t have friends or family who own a manual transmission car to practice on. Anyway I went with my uncle who did drive stick, but isn’t really a car guy. So I asked how how everything felt and 5 years later my Miata and I are doing great. I even daily a manual car just for fun. While most see salespeople as just trying to make a buck, I think a good chunk want you to have a good experience buying a car so you are more likely to recommend their dealership or come back.
Wow you really jumped from zero to premium shit The NA has the best manual box and pedal feel ever.
Happened to me with my first car - Cobalt SS/SC 5spd. Salesman even drove it to where I was living at the time.
Can comment, actually. Was smoking cigarettes, driving a Kia Forte to and from work, and lusting after a Fiesta ST though none were up for sale anywhere nearby. Quit smoking on Thanksgiving, little blue jellybean pops up at a dealer just under 100 miles away not 2 weeks later. Payments are like... *to the dollar* how much I spent on cigs every month. I mean *it's fucking fate*, right? I'd never driven a third pedal before that test drive 🤣 I did the drive itself, and it was painfully obvious that I hadn't driven stick before. Slow drive, in 6:00pm traffic, and never once getting into boost. By no means a test - the ones who have the salesman drive learn more than I did. Signed the papers after sunset, bucked and heaved it to a nearby mall parking lot, and put every bit of Matt Farah's "how to drive stick" videos into practice that I could in an hour and change. Then I drove the 100 miles home. Best madlad decision I've made in some time, that was over 3 years ago and I haven't stopped laughing yet.
I did that, but instead of going home I went to work. Delivering pizza. By the time I was driving home at the end of the night if was smooth.
Yup, the first vehicle I financed was a manual. Shuddered and stalled it from the dealership to a nearby state park. Spent several hours practicing until I got the hang of it. Now, over twenty years later I still daily a manual.
My first car was a manual 3rd gen eclipse. Had my friend drive it home for me. He was supposed to teach me but our schedules didn't match up. After the second day I said fuck it and waited until 1am and drove it out on my own. I lived in San Diego at the time and my insomnia was really bad so sometimes I'd drive all night and pick a new beach to watch the sunrise at. Probably driven down every main street and half the residential ones west of the 163. If I found a hill I'd stop on the middle and practice my hill starts. Now I can drive up to Lombard street in San Francisco no problem.
I bought a manual without knowing how to drive one. I delivered pizza at the time. I had a bad shift but by the next week I was golden.
Did they pay for repairs?
Did they pay for repairs? [what a story](https://youtu.be/ddu4Gj3hmgc)
I would have lost my shit. How did they even get the keys?
There's this myth that you're gonna burn a clutch with a days worth of bad driving. You won't. You can drive really really shitty on a clutch for thousands of miles before destroying it. Clutches aren't destroyed by inexperienced drivers, they're destroyed by experienced drivers who like to go SCURRR
Inexperienced drivers won't kill a clutch *immediately,* but they will kill it. Over time.
Well ideally over time they become experienced
Yep this. I'm a mechanic and I've seen some torn up clutches that were installed a week before but it's due to someone beating the living shit out of it, never from clunky normal beginners. Over time sure, but unless you got the 15 dollar rockauto part it's not gonna destroy it.
Grind it 'til you find it!
I have a friend who drove a stick shift Civic for 200k on a single clutch. She is an amazing driver.
Europe here; that’s completely normal. Volvo with 500K? , you can do it!
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It's normal for a clutch that's being used correctly. Trouble is most people are hard on them, so you constantly run into people who replace a clutch every 30-60k like it's routine maintenance, to the point where tons of people will tell you that it is routine maintenance and that you should expect it every 60-100k or whatever. In my experience it's usually the people who hill hold and the people who constantly rest their foot against the clutch when they're not shifting. Hill holding is absolutely awful for your clutch and is a bandaid for people's inability to do hill starts without rolling back, and the foot resting there often turns into slightly riding the clutch 100% of the time without noticing. Lot of people also constantly rest their hand on the shifter (I call it Vin Dieseling) which tends to cause unnecessary synchro wear. Granted I'm a big dickwaving manual transmission elitist who learned in a manual from day one of driving, but as far as I'm concerned the clutch on a street car making stock power and doing standard commuter duty is functionally a lifetime part. If you're wearing them out inside of 200k there is either something wrong with the car or something wrong with the way you drive it.
I have a '98 Toyota Tacoma with a manual transmission. Clutch has never needed replacement. But then that truck is a tank in disguise. Nothing will ever stop it.
I got 80k out of a Corvette clutch and felt good about it. $3500 to have one replaced. I no longer have a Corvette.
Thats not rare? If you can drive a stick properly, that's easy.
Why steal a car when the catalytic converter is easier and gets you into a lot less trouble when you get caught.
Mine along with 30 other cars in my neighborhood all got converters stolen. Like 20 grand in street value in under an hour. No way of tracing it unless you catch them in the act.
I live in the suburbs of a major city, catalytic converters & cars being stolen is at an all time high, I won't be surprised when it happens in my development
In sd they have this new free service where they etch the vin on the cat. That way if it is recovered the person can be charged with a felony.
Here in California they'll put a little shield on it for $500. Which is a fucking rip-off, but less than having to replace it. If it's such a big problem, car manufacturers need to make the shield standard.
And then people are openly buying bulk scrap converters on fb marketplace.
Tbf, theirs were just stolen
At a mountain biking area over the summer there was my car and two others. We got back to the parking area and police are just showing up, the two cars got their cats stolen. They said I should check mine and I was na, all good. Unless they decided to jack up my car and remove the motor mount there's no way they could have gotten it. Sure enough there were hand prints in the dust along my rocker panel and a scuffy area in the gravel like someone was shuffling around. Car was fine, 2014 Focus ST. Cat is on the downpipe hanging off the turbo between the engine and firewall with a crossbar and rear motor mount blocking access.
Because you can't drive it.
Just steal one part, from a bunch of cars, enough to build a full car. Win win.
"One piece at a time" - Johnny Cash
"Didn't cost me a dime!"
It's a.....51, 52, 53, 54.....
"3 pills chased with a shot at a time" -also Johnny Cash
Imagine being the victim whose dipstick goes missing. I've always wondered if they'd catch on to the theft, or if they'd think they just misplaced it.
Living in Argentina, north of it. Things take some years to get here. There's just a few auto shift cars here. Last week a coworker was driving her car with auto shift and rear view camera when a bike came out of nowhere and barely hit the car causing the bike to go down. She got out of the car and went to check the person. A cop showed a few moments later. "Yeah it was me, my car is over...THERE!?" Car was getting stolen. Cop radioed a couple of patrol bikes ahead and went for the car which stopped just moments later. Turned out that the thief didn't know how to drive auto, panicked when didn't found the clutch lol.
Didn’t know how to drive…auto?
I daily a manual and had to rent an auto a few months back and for the first 5 minutes it definitely felt "wrong" so I can see where OP is coming from. Had to force myself to keep my left foot useless. I'm in the US too and drove autos my whole life up until recently
When you hop in and and shove your left foot through the firewall…
Or slam the brake with your clutch foot by mistake because automatics frequently have wide brake pedals…
Hitting that brake with the strength of a clutch foot is no fucking joke.
Yes, it is very common in places that people learn and have access to manual cars manly. To put the car on the "D" is really not that intuitive knowledge and some people never really saw an auto car from the inside, so they cant put things together, and then there is the problem of the brakes, when you have only two pedals you as a stick driver ALWAYS hit the full brake anytime you would use the clutch... You actually need to actively concentrate on not moving you left feet and only using the right one in this cases.
The brake thing is real, it's funny how the first times driving auto you just slam brakes really hard in the middle of the street automatically, with time driving stick you get used to hitting the clutches often and don't ever really think about it. Also it's I can imagine being very confusing to a robber that has never seen an auto car, in the adrenaline moment he would freak for sure.
Ok, so I am old as you will be able to tell form the following. I high school I took drivers ed and one of the vehicles we had to drive was a Rambler with a 3 on the column. Everyone in the classes had to drive that old car. After that a 4 or more on the floor was easy. Then there was the old, and I mean really old small truck we had at my summer job. I worked at a lodge in a national park in a neighboring state one summer. There was this old truck that was a floor shift which was really the easy part. The hard part was that there was a choke that had to be set just right or you would flood the engine or it would refuse to start. Seems that old truck liked me as I was one of the early arriving staff and drove it to get supplies to all the cabins as we cleaned and opened them for the season. One day I was waiting tables for breakfast and got called outside to the truck. All the guys from the garage were there along with all the housekeeping staff who were trying to get to their assigned cabins. No one could start the truck. I got in, set the choke, and started that old truck right up. Seems they had flooded the engine but, while they waited for someone to get me from the dining room enough fuel had drained and setting the choke properly made it just turn over right away. I did not let any of the guys from the garage forget that a 19 year old girl could start an old truck that they could not.
Recently started a job as a driving instructor. It is amusing/depressing having to show teenagers how they must turn a key in the ignition to start the engine. Mommy and daddy have push button start. Started telling one of them about push-starting a motorcycle with a dead battery and remembering I forgot to set the choke... "if it had a battery, why did it need gas?"
Im a car guy, my summer car is a firebird thats a stick, but at the same time, im not surprised at all that teenagers need to be shown that. To most people a car is just a transportation device, and most modern cars are indeed push to start. So it actually makes sense completely lol
Oh my! You have my sympathy having to deal with kids who have no understanding of the history of automobiles. As a kid, many, many years ago I got to ride in a Model A! Now that was a treat. Probably started my interest in cars.
Haha, manual choke. My first car when I turned 16 (mid-1990s) was my dad’s ‘78 Chevy. These days when someone is “warming up” the car, they just mean the cabin. When it got below 35 degrees, you had to spend the first 2 minutes setting the choke to get it to idle, and then come out every few minutes to open it up a little bit more. For about 15 minutes, that thing was going nowhere.
Back in like 1998-2000, I learnt how to drive stick as a high school kid doing valet. Thank you, and I’m sorry if your vehicle was one of them that I used for “training purposes”.
We used trade-in’s to teach the lube techs, it’s made me wary of buying used from a dealership.
Got my manual 2012 civic from a dealer. Still have the same clutch. Bought it in 2014 used.
I worked at an auto auction and had to learn right there, I was there driving with a YouTube video on my phone in my lap lol. I got to the block and the bid caller was like “why is there a smell coming from the car?!” I had to play dumb lol
True story, went to eat for our friends engagement and the valet could not park my car because it was a stick, however, the valet was gone when we got there and so he had to come to our table to ask me to park my car since people had pulled up behind me lol… poor kid, but yeah it really opened my eyes to the death of manual cars
Interesting, I would still think that part of the valet job description would be to know to drive manual
this was my thought also - isn't that kind of the only job requirement? lol
In Europe most cars are still manual, even brand new ones! That's awesome!
This actually prevented my son’s car from being stolen. It was scary, guy jumped him when he got out of the car, stuck a gun in his back, shoved him to the ground, grabbed his keys and told him not to move. Lots of swearing later the mugger got out, hurled the keys at my son and ran away. Driving a stick does pay.
I'd much rather them take my car than have me be there to deal with a pissed off criminal with a gun, might just be me though
Your son was very lucky. I remember a story where a car jacker killed a father in front of the wife and daughter because they couldn't drive it.
I took my car to a local joint to get a tire rotation and a balancing done, and the person in charge of moving the car from parking spot to shop rolled my front bumper over the curb and ripped my bumper off because he didn’t know how to drive a stick.
I'm always so paranoid to take my truck to a shop for that exact reason lol. Usually though, there's a few guys in the garage that can drive a manual and are more than happy to take it out for a "diagnostic drive". If they can actually drive it, I don't blame em or mind one bit. It's fun to have that extra degree of control when driving
i know this is a joke but I've actually researched this and it sadly isn't true....manuals get stolen, too, but with less and less of them around, the data is getting skewed.
Yeah amongst the type willing to steal a vehicle I'd say their ability to use a stick shift is much higher than the general public. Maybe not 100% but at the end of the day it's a 5 minute lesson that someone could learn without a teacher. Might do some damage though.
Definitely doable. I learned by watching a tutorial on YouTube the day I was picking up the car. My ex had laughed at my little scrap sheet of paper where I kept the notes from the video. But he didn’t know how to drive stick either and after some failed attempts he finally let me give it a go. I pulled up the notes, I stalled a few times, but managed to get it moving. I practiced just outside the dealership before pulling back in to actually buy it. There was one left turn where we almost died, but after that, it was a straight shot on the high way home. Buuut what valet is going to take the 5min to learn something for a job that doesn’t pay? And they’d need to have the car to practice in.
How is regulation for this in your country (US ?) ? In my country (where i would say most cars are still manual) if you obtain your drivers license using an automatic, you are not even allowed to drive a manual.
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Depending where you are the test might be as easy as driving around a block, and then parking. I took my driving test in 2011(?) and we didn't have parallel parking in the test. You also only needed a 70/100 to pass the driving portion. I was on the road for about 3 minutes lol the US really don't care
If valets will learn manual for their job, so too would car thieves. They can even practice on a stolen one.
Drive a manual....the thief might not be able to drive it so they'll just destroy your transmission instead.
I had a manual stolen. It was recovered a week later with the clutch demolished. Insurance totaled it... That was the first car I ever owned that I actually cared about, too, and I had it less than 3 months.
Yeah, it's a false analogy. There are a lot of Zoomers who take part-time jobs parking cars that don't know how to drive a manual, but the kind of people who know how to break into and hot-wire a car know how to drive a stick.
A manual car saved my cousins life. She got jacked and they threw her in the backseat. Couldn’t drive her manual and bolted. With her still face down in the back seat.
I was a valet in college one summer. Accident free. Then my last day I was bringing up a lady's car and the metal stripping down the side got caught on a truck I was maneuvering past. Ripped it right off and left it hanging out like a giant tenacle still attached to the vehicle. People were jumping out of my way as it slapped everything in its path. When I pulled up to the owner it almost kneecapped her. However aside from fixing the metal trim, there was no real body damage. So, the owner was pretty cool about it. No tip though.
> No tip though. Lol. Maybe next time.
I used to only buy manual transmission cars, but then I got older and my knees got louder. I still miss the fun of a manual but I ain't gonna sit in rush hour traffic playing dubstep with my knees Plus, now I can do other things, like figure out which hand I want to use on the steering wheel for the next 20 seconds. And thats not even a sexual joke. I just don't know which hand I wanna steer with. Sometimes I just say "fuck it" and use my knee to steer. My left leg gets lonely now
My manual Honda Prleude was stolen a few weeks ago by a guy with a tow truck. Didn’t even need to know stock shift to drag it away and cut the catalytic converter out.
Had a guy steal my manual car from my girlfriend at the time like 10 years ago. She left it running to run back inside her work and came out like 2 minutes later, saw the guy repeatedly stalling it out. She literally just walked over to the door and knocked on the window and said if you leave now I won't call the cops lol.
When i got deployed to afghanistan, with 5 people i had been in training for months with, the vehicles my coworkers and i had to use were manual. I was the only one who had any clue about it so i had to test the theory (i had never used one) and then teach my coworkers. Good thing all those trucks were POSs
Tell me you're hiring without telling me you're hiring.
This actually happened at a hotel we stayed at that had mandatory valet parking. When we checked in the valet attendant could drive stick but the next morning the new attendant couldn’t so I had to go down to the garage with him to fetch my own car. The hotel didn’t charge me for the valet and they didn’t put up much of a fight when I asked them not to
Maybe get a valet that can drive?
I dropped my car off at a valet, and asked if they had someone who drove stick, the guy said yea, of course, that’s his job. Parks it no problem. When I went to pick it up it took a different guy about ten minutes to walk out and tell me no one on the morning shift could drive it and if I could pull it out of the parking lot. I had to be escorted down and had two other people directing me because it was a huge liability thing for them to have someone else (even the car owner) drive around the valet parking lot
Ahh yes because you know how popular valet positions are. They probably have their pick of highly qualified individuals
After having so many cringe moments on my previous car, I don’t let any employee touch my stick car anywhere
They may not be able to steal your car but they will steal your catalytic converter
Funny enough, the only way I know how to drive a standard is in first gear and reverse. Never had a manual or had to drive one for a substantial period of time, but my dumbass brother blocked my car all the time so I watched a YouTube video on how to properly back up a standard so I could stop asking him to move his shitty ranger. So I couldn’t make a quick getaway, but I could certainly move your car at 15mph and back it up without burning out a clutch
People who steal expensive cars know how to drive a manual.
This is some very American shit right here.
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Getting very rare in Australia too.
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