Dolts.
CC
Ha! Ha!
I never really thought of having a manual as an anti-theft device, but I guess these days it is.
My family has a tradition of driving manuals — although my daughter, who drove a manual all through college, has yet to teach her husband to drive a stick. But it’s increasingly a skill confined to gearheads. Of my younger son’s large cohort of friends and associates, only one, who definitely qualifies as a gearhead, besides my son could drive a manual.
That shift pattern works unless it is 3 speed - in which case upper left is REVERSE!
(I learned from personal experience! LOL)
I don’t have to worry about my 5 speed getting ripped off. I’m wearing an air cast boot on my left foot. I’ve gotten pretty good at shifting without the clutch.
I love my manual transmission car and would definitely go for a manual transmission on my next vehicle. My kids however learned to drive with automatic transmissions and it was quite a project to teach my adult son how to drive a stick shift. My daughter just doesn’t have much mechanical sense and I have warned her husband not to even attempt to teach her to drive a stick shift.
Nowadays if you try to buy a vehicle with a manual, the dealer will only have the stripper/entry level model of the car you want with a manual, if they have one at all. I wanted a model with a manual, and also a ‘premium’ package on it,and they had to order it from the factory since, according to them, “only people looking for the base model will drive a manual”.
When I was a state copper working in Cook County I was in Chicago in the Greektown resturant area when my partner and I monitored a Chicago Police Dept flash message about a car jacking that had just occured in the area within the last few minutes.
Just moments after we made note of it, we heard cars honking at a late model import that was moving slowly in the left lane, jerking and stopping as other cars swerved around it. Since it matched the description of the suspect vehicle, we made a felony stop, detained three suspects who had two pistols in the car, and notified CPD Tactical officers to meet us at the scene.
These suspects were subsequently identified as the offenders in the car jacking, and the reason for the erratic driving that had captured our attention was the fact that the ringleader couldnt drive the 5 speed manual transmission init very well. one of his accomplices was an 18 wheel truck driver who was entirely capable of driving it, but the boss said that he had always wanted to drive a stick shift and this would be his first chance, so he ordered his buddy to stand down and took the wheel himself.
We wouldnt catch so many of these clowns if so many werent so damn stupid.