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

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.

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

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

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.

Common password recovery question..

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"

I still drive one WITH a clutch. Manuals are pretty cool.

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

Still do.

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.

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.

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

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

Yep. Still have two stick cars. They’re not dead yet.

1979 Datsun 210. Eventually sold the thing for five cartons of cigarettes.

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.

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?

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

I learned to drive in a big ass truck, but I did recently get my first manual transmission car. It's not that hard to learn I don't think.

1993 Isuzu rodeo.

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.

OG Mini. So, yes, had a manual clutch. Now, 40-something years later I'm driving an automatic for the first time because they don't make the car I wanted at the spec. I wanted in a manual.

My first car was a '73 VW Super Beetle.

Learned on a 2000s era VW Beetle, and then a Mazda B2500 FW/2WD. Last manual I owned was a 2015 Honda Fit. Now both our vehicles are Automatic AWD.

I did get to drive a little 4cyl manual SEAT on holiday in Madeira which was an adventure. 36% grade roads, hairpin turns -- like 150cc mario kart around there

It was a first generation Ford Focus hatchback.

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.

My first two cars were manuals, and I enjoy manuals (drive an EV now so no choice there) but this post reeks of acting like doing so makes us special. It doesn't. We just learned a different skill, and almost anyone can learn it if they chose to and especially if they enjoy it.

I learned on an automatic and didn't know stick. Did that stop me from buying an old manual Mustang? Nope. I figured I had some practice with manual shifting in racing games (console), surely it couldn't be that hard. I stalled plenty of times leaving the lot but once I got it going it was fine. It only really took a couple days of dropping clutch and stalling on hills before I had it down.
Edit- Dang pedants

Suzuki Samurai FTW

Learned to drive manual on a 1981 BMW 320i. All of my cars are still manual to this day. 1999 Toyota Solara, 1988 Toyota Corolla GTS, 2003 Toyota MR2 Spyder and 2020 Hyundai Veloster N. But mostly I ride my bike, which is also a manual.

Amazing shitpost.

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

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.

Learned and took my driving test in an 88 Dodge Omni 5 speed.

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.

started off in a Vauxhall Corsa with no power steering or windows, yes a full manual car. Except choke

I did drive some of my mums auto cars, remembering that they dont have a clutch is the problem.

Learnt in a ford mondeo, some early 2000s model.

Still got a manual as my daily driver.

Since the question is 'vehicle': Massey-Ferguson 165. Or if you insist a car: Opel Kadett C.

I did. 1993 Saturn SL2. I bought that car for $1500 in 2001 when I was 16 and quite literally drove it until the wheels fell off (which then ended in me flipping over the car on the highway, but that's a story for another day. That also ended with being the reason I can't listen to "The Red" by Chevelle without a mild panic attack, also a story for another day.)

The idea of buying an 8 year old car (with only 93k miles, at that) for $1500 just seems so foreign now.

All it needed was a muffler, too. I drove it for about a year and a half before I killed the clutch, and that was the most expensive repair it had.

I forget what the cat is even called, but it was an old Subaru hatchback. I wanna say GT? Maybe there's a number... I dunno but it was a tiny lil thing.

Haven't given one since then, though. And I didn't do too well with it either, but I am not a car guy, and I don't drive in crazy road situations that would make it useful.

I'm still glad I learned that way though, as my cars since then made more sense to me. At least until now, since I have a hybrid with a CVT.

I learned to drive on two cars because my parents were divorced: my Dad's Ford Ranger (manual) and my Mom's silly "talking" Chrysler Laser (it literally talked to you, felt weirdly futuristic see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voice_alert ). I never really had a problem with using a clutch, it was the lack of power steering on that truck that sucked. I made sure that I never bought a car without power steering after learning on that truck.

VW T3 with a 4 speed manual and a Passat with a 3 speed slush box.

Whatever the driving school had, I have no idea what car it was.