Thinly Read: An Old British Car problem

ShareThis

When I was first learning to drive, using a manual transmission seemed to be some sort of Amish logic, like forgoing a sewing machine in favor of a loom.
I actually couldn't understand why the stick still existed after the invention of automatic shifting. The automatic transmission had been around since the 1950s; surely everyone by now had an opportunity to use one and recognize its superiority.
Who were these holdouts? Who would go through so much added trouble when parallel parking was hard enough on its own? It must, I figured, take the kind of person who purposefully seeks out unnecessary trouble.
Someone like my dad.
Dad has what one might call an Old British Car problem. Its defining symptom is the persistent feeling that one's garage is not quite big enough. This means that his vehicles of choice come with a manual transmission or no transmission at all. He has owned both varieties.
Unlike some classic-car owners, Dad prefers to drive his cars. Naturally, he expected me to drive them as well. And so, my first manual-transmission experience took place in a car more than twice my age with no seat belts and a crash rating similar to a soda can's.
As if this were not enough pressure, this particular car was valued at (and certainly worth more than) four years of collegiate journalism education. I could practically see dollar signs flying from the exhaust with every jarring stall.
After a crash course in a parking lot and a few turns around the block, I elected to abandon the manual transmission for good. The Old British Car problem, I decided, must not be hereditary. I was decidedly in the camp of modern automotive convenience.
Who, after all, would really choose to drive a stick shift in a modern car? Sure, there are those classic-car buffs without any choice, but why would anyone purchase a car made in my lifetime featuring a transmission as old as the first motorized coach? It must, I figured, take the kind of person who goes looking for a challenge.
Someone like my wife.
At the time, of course, she was my girlfriend. And at the time she tooled around in a tiny two-door with a crash rating similar to a plastic soda bottle's. But she loved this car and, more than that, loved that I could not drive it.
As with all healthy relationships, this developed into a point of pride to be overcome at all costs. I borrowed (stole) the car for two weeks, driving it everywhere in fits and starts. I developed new and elaborate routes to work that avoided all hilltop stop signs. I ran many an orange light. And one day, on that second week, it finally came to me.
I started a turn, put in the clutch, downshifted and sped out of the curve all in one fluid motion. OK, I thought. Now I get it.
Now I understand the connection of the driver to the car, the feel and nuance of my relationship to the road, and the pleasure of actually driving instead of simply riding. Now I understand all of these manual-transmission holdouts.
And now, of course, I have my own Old British Car problem.

(Ben Grabow writes for the young, the urban and the easily amused. Contact him at thinlyread(at)gmail.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
THINLY READ