My driving school had 2002 Corollas. Had a lot of problems to get the „feel“ for the clutch and after I mastered that the most challenging thing for me was starting on a hill using the handbrake. Auto-Hold these days is truly a blessing :)

Yeah I learned with a clutch, its very useful to have that skill in many countries where automatic is not available or much cheaper to rent.

Most people not in the US. We just call it 'driving'

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.

Every car has a clutch. Not all of them are manual.

Still own one. Was looking at going to a Kona EV but sounds like there's a wide spread reduction gear issue with the model I was considering, so maybe not.

What is this, some kind of poll to get the average age of Lemmy?

Right. Most of you are from the US. Argentinian here, everybody drives manual. I even wanted to buy an automatic last time but my mechanic was like " Don't even look at it. There is none in this city who can fix those. It might be a great value, but if it breaks, its done for"

Common password recovery question..

Oh, these "let's get people to reveal their password reset question" Facebook campaigns again...

99% of people in my country.....

My grandfather had a rule for his kids, and my mom passed it down to me.

You can't have a license until you can:

• Check and fill all the vehicle fluids
• Perform an oil change
• Change a tire
• Drive a manual transmission
• Change belts and hoses

I learned on a stick. I even did some learning on my uncle's beetle with a broken clutch (they were reasonably optional on the OG Bug). And I have not been behind of the wheel of one since. Still glad I learned all that stuff.

Everyone? How else are you going to change gear?

I think a more interesting question would be:

How many people learned to drive in a car with a manual Choke?

I believe the better question here is "clutch pedal" as automatic cars still have a clutch, you just aren't manually booting it.

But yes I did learn to drive stick in a 2002 Mazda Protege.

Dad had to replace the clutch before I had mastered the subtle art of doing two things at the same time in a car.

Also I'm dyslexic and get my right and left mixed up easily . So you can imagine trying to navigate two feet on 3 pedals didn't go well.

I did eventually learn a manual.

I learned in a car with automatic transmission first, but had to drive both and prefer (strongly prefer) a manual transmission.

Worst one ever - The Van. The shifter was about a meter long, the gears were so hard to find, and I had to drive it in tight spaces.

Best one ever, my current Honda from 2014. Absolutely glorious.

That is still the standard way here. Automatic is something we still leave to those for who a gear is too complicated.

1993 Isuzu rodeo.

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.

Amazing shitpost.

People really went directly to the manual vs automatic debate without realizing it has nothing to do with that.

The fuck is a clutch? Oh, manual gear? I learned at driving school, I think all of them use manual cars in Brazil, since they're way more common than automatics

An old Chevy pickup, with my dad mocking and bitching at me the entire time which really helped my anxiety about being on the road. Wonderful learning experience. First and last time I ever went out with him to learn to driving.

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.

Still do.

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

An ancient 10 speed dodge dump truck doing sugar beet harvest in nodak.

The UK is becoming more automatic now, and we also have a lot of EVs. I learnt on a manual but didn't get a car until last year, which is electric. It's much better.

Lot of people searching "clutch" right now

I don't know if electric vehicles have one but other than them all cars have clutches, whether manual or automatic.

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

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.

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.