Found in Eugene on 5/7/2026
Wordless Outtake: “Mommy, What’s A Stick Shift?”
– Posted on May 11, 2026
Found in Eugene on 5/7/2026
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THE KIDS NEEDS THE HELL HOLDER
Hill holder? yeah maybe. My Mini has it. Still, being a retro/troll, i prefer to keep it in neutral till the light turns. Remind them snotnose punks behind me that i care more about old tech than they do. now where is the choke & the damned spark advance lever?
I mentioned the choke in my old Citroën to my 40 year old niece and she said “What is a choke?”.
Just think how surprised she would have been if you had mentioned roll down windows!
The great theft deterrent as most young do not know how to ! I was shifting gears & steering a manual steering 58 Plymouth wag sitting on my father’s lap at 6 years old !! as I could not reach the peddles ! lol ! as an adult wen in San Fransisco driving a VW you just pull hand brake on wen coming to a stop on hill put car in neutral wen ready to go wen car feels like its ready to go release hand brake & your off ! I had to teach my friend new to those hills how so he did not burn the clutch out ! ………..
Every few years I hear or read a story about how an attempted carjacking was thwarted by an unexpected stick shift the thief didn’t know how to drive, often getting noticed by a cop watching the car sputter around.
Doing a hill start without rolling back, [ even an inch was a fail I was told], was part of the UK driving test when I sat it in 1967.
I was told by one of my classmates back the good day in Hong Kong. When the new driver took the license test, the roll back requirement was less than 20 centimeters without hand brake engaged on the slope choose by the license examiner. This was normal done for starting the car from a stop on the slope. Excessive roll back would fail the test.
There are some countries where if you take your driving exam to get a license in an automatic-transmission vehicle, your driving license will restrict you to driving an automatic only. In the US it’ a state-by-state thing, but I’m not aware of any with that requirement.
After several decades of driving stick, I am able to not roll back by engaging the clutch slightly. On very steep hills (or if there’s something directly behind me) I may use the hand brake, but that’s very rare. My current car is the first with a hill-holder, but I often forget it’s there. It only holds for 3 to 4 seconds.
Australia limits you to an auto if that’s how you took your test. My guess would be that 90% of kids do it in an auto.
These days everyone the automatic transmission cars are rolling back in deep slope. I think it is something to do with the modern automatic transmission disengaging the engine and transmission when the car stops and idles, the feature is to save fuel during the car doesn’t move. Notice this first in my 2003 Accord — my 87 Accord didn’t do this if I remember.
So 3/4″. I wonder how they verified that. Sorry, you went 7/8″ so you fail.
San Francisco has some pretty steep streets above 31% and one street has a section at 41% grade. I generally avoided those hills and there was little reason to be on them. However, the few times I was I used my hand brake rather that burn my clutch for a second or two. Clutch lifespan more important although my roll back might have been 1″ to 1.5″ without the hand brake.
20cm is just under 8″, not 3/4″.
This has the same energy as a kid seeing a 3 1/2″ floppy and remarking “you 3D printed a save icon”. I took my road test in an automatic car but switched to a manual a few months later. Either the local hills weren’t very steep or I got the hang of hill starts quickly because I don’t remember rolling back much. There is hope for the young, my son actually bought a car with a manual specifically to master the skill and some of his friends have cars with manual, although none can match his friend the truck driver, who can float gears on a Fuller Road Ranger.
It’s a boy vehicle. LOL
Old guy here. Took driver’s training in giant 1957 Buick Special 4-dr sedans. V-8, stick shift. There was a waiting list from the local Illinois farmers to buy them when the school term was up.
Of course, Illinois didn’t have too many hilly streets. It wasn’t until we moved to Idaho that I learned how to really drive a stick shift.
Vancouver BC can be pretty hilly. One of the major routes in Vancouver is Oak St, which goes all the way to the USA/Mexico border. Anyway, there is subway construction on Broadway, slowing traffic on Oak. Even with the hill holder, getting started on started on the 22% grade takes a fair amount of skill.
My dad taught me how to start on hills in our 1974 Toyota Corolla. I was like thirteen years old at the time, so learning was quick!
My daily driver is a 2019, 6 speed Hyundai Accent. Last week I went to the movies, and I had to use the valet parking because the regular parking lot was full. The theater is located in an upscale area so most of the cars were European SUVs. There was only one young man of around 10 employees, that knew how to drive a manual. I had to wait for the parking lot attendant, to bring the man so that he could park my car. And my car does have hill holder but it’s not working. I do it old school with the hand brake.
One more story on how early i drove a stick —
As a motor-head kid, I always took the front teat of the school-bus, so I could watch the driver shift gears.
it’s 1963, and I’m about 10. Our bus had a big “GMC” logo on the hood.
On a slow, level stretch, the driver called me over:
— He was about to shift from 3rd, straight down, to 4th.
— The driver pointed to the 2-foor-long shift lever.
— He said “You know what to do!”
Indeed, I did.
A day remember as clearly as learning to tie my show laces!
I love stick shifts (I own several) and will do everything I can to keep them on the road and teach/encourage new drivers (and not-so-new). But as mentioned multiple times already, part of that is knowing how to avoid rolling back on a hill start. That’s dead easy on my diesel truck, especially in granny first. Even on a typical car, you usually won’t roll back if you master letting the clutch out to the beginning of engagement just before you move your foot from the brake to the gas. The next level requires the handbrake. But both those take practice, and a lot of people getting their licenses will just refuse anything beyond what they consider the minimum. I think new drivers should still be taught how to drive a stick – to include hill starts. Then going to an auto will be easy (although a back-and-forth approach might be wiser), but the skills and confidence will hopefully be enough that they could get somewhere with a stick if need be. Ultimately, I’m not sure how to feel about the owner of this car. I applaud them if they’re serious about sticking with it – but if so, that bumper sticker had better be a band-aid until they master the technique.
My ’46 Plymouth has a hand throttle knob on the dash. I use it to speed up the idle after a cold start, as it doesn’t have a fast idle mechanism on the carb. The hand throttle can also be used as a primitive cruise control. I was reading the owner’s manual (a reprint) and I was advised of another use. On a steep hill the engine can be revved up enough that the driver can just negotiate the clutch and brake, and can back off the hand throttle once the car is underway. Maximum torque is realized at 1,200 rpm, so it doesn’t take many revs to get going.
My 69 Alfa Berlina had a hand throttle, and it was the only one I have seen. I was aware of the possibility of using it as a cruise control, but I only ever used it to adjust the idle speed when it was due for a tune up.
Jose ;
Now you _MUST_ provide a picture or link to the details . I hope its a Coupe, those were wonderful, far better cars than Ford or GM at the time .
I too learned stick shift by watching how everyone did it, then I tried a ‘crashbox'(no synchros) and was able to master it pretty easily .
Back on the day almost everyone with a slush box simply reached the top of a hill (or stop light) then kept their foot on the gas to hold the vehicle from rolling back, this overheats the A.T.F. in 30 seconds or so, now you know why so many had rebuilt trannies at 40,000 miles .
The foot operated park brakes made hill stops a “three pedal” situation, I learned it early on and my shop truck is still a manual 5 speed, it’s perfect being modern (2001) .
Driving any vwhicle in sans clutch is one of those things few can do, I’ve done it many times but hope to never need to again .
Another good article that makes people think =8-) .
-Nate
No hills here to speak of, yet for the (in)famous hill start -part of the driving lessons and often also of the driving test- you just went to a road nearby that lead to the top of a levee. Plentiful of such roads around and always nearby, you just knew what was coming.
I wish I had taken a photo of an Impreza I saw in our neighborhood for a while, several years ago. The bumper sticker read “Real Chicks Drive Stick”. So I peered inside and it was an automatic. Our 2004 Forester was the first car I owned with hill holder, and it worked … just OK. Our current Golf also has a hill holder, and like everything about the feel of VW’s transmission and clutch, it works much more smoothly and predictably. Even though I’d been driving a stick shift for over 30 years even before getting the Subaru, I do take advantage of the feature at times.
My father found the only hill in South Florida – in the parking lot of the old Sunrise Musical Theater – to teach me how to pull away on a hill.
Hill starts petrified me when I was learning to drive stick, I got very proficient using the parking brake as I got accustomed but after a while (save for the steepest grades) I got good enough to move without rolling back without frying the clutch, having a torquey V8 and steep 4.30 gears helps.
What still sometimes petrifies me is starting on a hill with someone else crowding my rear bumper. I had a brake master problem recently that I got fixed in April at considerable expense, and a couple days before I took it in, I had a nerve-wracking moment where I was stopped at the top of a fairly steep parking lot ramp with someone pulled up right behind me, impatient that I was stopping for cross-traffic and pedestrians. In addition to the usual hill-start problem, I was dealing with the fact that I had to press the brake really far down to get the brakes to actually meaningfully engage, which made it very fraught all around. Luckily, I managed it okay, but yeesh!
Been there. If I still had an old car, I’d also still be disturbed by that combination.
That was my first experience with a hill, a mild one, in downtown San Francisco. Just learned how to basically drive a stick a few days earlier in a 72 Capri. That was all well and good on level ground but somehow I found myself on a mild hill in order to get on the Bay Bridge entrance across the street. Took me three tries to get across the street from a dead stop on the downside of the hill. I didn’t know about using the hand brake, The hill wouldn’t have been a problem for an experienced driver. Fortunately no one on the road to watch me roll a full block backwards down the hill two times. So I timed my ascent the third time to hit the light just right and got onto the bridge. I rolled back in a 73 911E Targa.
I’m still driving an anti-theft, though I’ve got to confess I wouldn’t mind an auto these days. Too much dullard hoppity-bumpity squeeze chop brake accelerate city stuff round here for a manual to be of much interest.
A rollback of more than a wee amount here will automatically fail your licence test here, and likewise if you have to be re-tested for some reason (which has caught out a few older drivers).
I too learnt the Dance of The Pedals after a while of manualling, such that the handbrake didn’t have to play, though habit of clutch preservation mostly made me use it.
I think anyone who’s driven older, utterly unergonomic cars might’ve been a tad traumatized by the handbrake start. The worst I had was a mid-60’s column-change Falcon. The thing already had quite awful slowers – not “stoppers”, note – which required a manly approach (and possibly two feet) for pedal operation. But on a hill, egad! Correctly strapped in with non-intertia belts, one had to stomp that rock of a pedal with a prayer that the rear shoes would contract enough for the handbrake to work well, then with breathing almost ceased by the belt, reach way forward under the dash, face pressed against the too-close horn ring, to find the badly-placed t-handle (threading past the stick down in first), and yank for Australia on it: then stay crouched and sweating in that absurd fetal repose till the lights changed, whence the clutch could be eased out, that knee almost into your purple face, the handle twisted (if it didn’t catch) and you could shoot back up into a position of vague dignity, where you could gulpingly resume breathing, and also see where you were going once more.
These modern kids aren’t entirely dumb, you know…
The lost art of the stick shift.
My brother taught me on his floor mounted 3 speed manual Mercury Cougar. Then my sister let me drive her Karman Ghia. I took my driving test on a manual. My next two cars were manuals and I taught my youngest sister.
IN the last few years, I was tempted to buy a used Fiat 500 to teach my nieces and nephews, but I passed and lament the decision.
If I understand correctly, the Fiat has the roll back feature making the hills less of a challenge.
I had an opportunity recently to drive a manual without the aid of a clutch pedal, which is always an adventure.