Most people not in the US. We just call it ‘driving’
It’s not just automatics anymore, but also
- CVTs, especially forneconoboxes that used to be manual
- electronic shifters, sort of automatic
- automatic, with more and more gears
- EVs don’t need a transmission
The thing is there’s no longer much of a price difference and manual is no longer the efficient choice
The change is coming for you guys as well. I’ve travelled to Colombia on a regular basis over the past 20 years or so, and transmisión mecánica has gone from nearly ubiquitous to almost exclusively an econobox option. Maybe performance cars as well I guess? Wouldn’t know about those
What is this, some kind of poll to get the average age of Lemmy?
I remember when it was absurd to pay $10 for a banana.
Here in Spain it’s estimated that automatic transmission is between 30 and 50% of cars. No official numbers have been released.
So most people have learnt with a clutch. Definitely everyone who has had their license for more than 10 years.
As someone who learned driving using a manual transmission car, automatic transmission is much better for city driving, I hated having to be careful with the clutch in stop and go city traffic, my left leg would get so sore after a while, plus I’ve stalled the engine more than once by letting the clutch go too fast.
Yeah I finally went over to the dark side because of bostons horrendous stop and go traffic
Of course I’d use transit whenever I could. However I lived to the east and had to drive through Boston to get home from anywhere else. There were times when it took hours to drive just a couple miles: I couldn’t deal with manual transmission for that
When I was 15 in the 90s, every adult in the family, and adult friends of the family, said “You’re 15? Let’s go drive for an hour or two!” I’m pretty sure that, legally, a parent was supposed to be with me, but I guess any random adult was close enough.
I just added up 14 different vehicles I “learned on,” including an old pickup with “three on the tree”, a Corvette, a 280z turbo, a 68 Chevelle, an International Scout. The rest were boring vehicles. If I remember correctly, 9 were manuals.
Oh, these “let’s get people to reveal their password reset question” Facebook campaigns again…
Learned it from the beginning. It was my first car. Wanna say it was a late 80s or very early 90s really basic Ford Mustang that my aunt sold to my parents for me to use for like $200 bucks. I loved it, but not even a year later on my way to high school a van flying down the road rear ended me while I was trying to make a left turn waiting for traffic to clear… I haven’t had stick shift since.
Here’s a pic of around what it looked like so you can see it was a very basic car back then or this model was super basic haha.
Lot of people searching “clutch” right now
That is still the standard way here. Automatic is something we still leave to those for who a gear is too complicated.
Yep. Still have two stick cars. They’re not dead yet.
Learned with and still using stick.
I think it was a Renault Megane. Hopeless car. Left it outside in the cold one night. Every bit of wiring had shorted and if i turned on the wipers, the lights would flicker and the radio turned on.
Sounds like your car was possessed
That’s just French cars
I mean the only reason French cars are still made is to make Italian cars look good.
Renault of that era are complet garbage, but still sold a tonne. This badly damaged their reputation and they took a long time to recover.
1993 Isuzu rodeo.
Suzuki Samurai FTW
1982 SAAB 900. No turbo, no sunroof. No frills. Still a fun car to drive. Drove it till the motor gave out just shy of 1,500,000 miles on the ODO
1.5 million???
I had a total of 6 SAABs. I was a delivery driver that did long distance deliveries, mostly donated organs. None of them died before 1.2 million miles. The closest I ever got to the 2 million mile club was my 1986 SAAB 900 SPG that I got to a whopping 1,854,35*,*** miles. I don’t remember the small digits. There are still SAABs out there that are joining that club, and they haven’t made one since 2011
That’s awesome. I can’t think of any car built in the last 20 years that you could expect anywhere near that kind of longevity. Even ‘premium’ German brands. I had a BMW that started falling to bits after 100k and my SO had an Audi from brand new that was riddled with problems for the 3 years she had to endure it.
Holy crap! My wife’s Solara has 368,000 miles on it and I thought that was a lot.
I had a total of 6 SAABs. I was a delivery driver that did long distance deliveries, mostly donated organs. None of them died before 1.2 million miles. The closest I ever got to the 2 million mile club was my 1986 SAAB 900 SPG that I got to a whopping 1,854,35*,*** miles. I don’t remember the small digits. There are still SAABs out there that are joining that club, and they haven’t made one since 2011
That’s insanity. Too bad I never really cared for the look of the Saab. Looks like a shoe to me. Good cars I guess.
Learned to drive on this bad boy:
Then my first car was this beauty:
It has hydrologic suspensions, it’s cool AF. Got it 10yo and 230000km and drove it until it died into a cloud of smoke 😢 RIP
