Everything I own is manual. If they’d put these thugs in a zoo type location and let them duke it out, we’d have safer places to live and free entertainment.
Learned how to use a clutch and gear box on one of these, I think I was 8-9 years old…
A conversation I had with my daughter who was driving a her first car, a not-so-slightly used 15-year old Beetle:
You want a new car? I’ll buy you one but it’s stick shift.
She said yes without any hesitation.
I wonder how many kids nowadays are taught to drive stick.
Not everything I own is manual - some of my possessions are semi-automatic…
Very few. No need, generally.
very few viewers understand Fast n the Furious gear changes
When I was 11 my grandfather let me mow the bar ditch using his Deere Model G (1937) with a sickle-bar mower. I couldn’t reach the pedals from the seat, so I had to drive standing up. My mother had a S-fit. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Nice One @alfarat 
I love driving a stick. I considered all my vehicles theft proof because kids don’t know how to drive a stick. I taught all of my kids how to drive one. BTW, I used to work in Bethesda. That it is a very nice area where the auto theft and gun whipping occurred. Germantown is not as ritzy but also very nice. Incredible. Surprised the fellow in Bethesda could find a parking space in that ultra-left community.
I like it. Let’s build a stadium, put in some of those huge replay screens and call them gladiators. I’m also for bringing back Devils Island too.
My uncle was a prison guard. His solution was similar. Let them all fight it out and promise freedom to the last one left alive.
I’m not advocating that, just repeating what he said.
I leaned to drive a stick working on farms before I had my license.
Farmer: this truck needs to go to the next field.
Me: I’m 14. I don’t have a license.
Farmer:Pull that hay wagon too.
Me: I don’t know how to drive a stick.
Farmer: you will by the time you get to the next field.
Me: ok. It’s your clutch.
I can hear the grinding now lol ouch
Though, in the defense of everyone who has ever watched a fast and furious movie, the shifting that gets done in those films produces actions in the vehicles that make very little sense when compared real world physics.
WIth each film I’ve been thinking they should explain that in actuality, the stick shifts are actually magic wands from the Harry Potter universe. Only then does anything the cars do make even some sense.
Ignorance is bliss.
Kids don’t know what they’re missing. 
Fast and furious movies get ‘car stuff’ about as accurate as most mainstream movies get ‘gun stuff’
It has been about 10 years since I rented a vehicle in Europe, but automatic transmission cost about double to rent.
The last one I rented in Germany was a 4 door Mercedes with a 6 speed manual. It could get to about 135 mph in 5th gear. Shifting to 6th gear slowed it down to around 125 mph.
The point is I think manual is still king in Europe
I learned in a VW based kit car that was…ridiculous looking. Still, my old lovely neighbor taught me and let me drive her around to learn. I’ve carried that with me all of my life.
Same. VW Bug. No clutch cable. At each stop I had to turn it off to put it into gear.