After having driven a manual transmission car for at least five months, doing a lot of researching about modding cars, and doing research on why it IS important to learn how to drive manual transmission (not saying that you have to, just a few tips of advice), these are my thoughts on why you should learn how to drive 'stick shift' (manual transmission for short, for those of you who don't know) car.
1). Just in case you are buying your first car and you don't want to spend too much on it and you still have some money left over to fix it up a bit, over 50% of cars from before the year 2000 are stick shift.
This is also why all the generations before us (our parents, grandparents, great grandparents, etc) all know how to drive manual transmission (especially China, Taiwan, those Asian countries). All the cars in the past in Taiwan and China were all manual transmission cars. For example, when I was researching for cars before I got my own mustang, I searched on Yahoo! Autos and most, if not all, the cars from 1999/2000 and before were stick shift. The thing is...depending on the car, those cars from 2000 or before cost $1000, $2000, $3000 at the most and some of them are even cheaper, just depends on where the car is being sold from.
2). If you learn how to drive a stick shift car, you know how to drive any car you see on the streets.
Believe it or not, when I got my permit, my mom told me to learn how to drive stick shift because then when I go back to Taiwan, I can drive my uncle's car. Guess what my reaction to that was? 'NO, I DON'T WANT to drive stick shift. I HATE stick shift.' I got mad at my mom for still pushing me to learn how to drive stick shift, but now? I am GLAD that she forced me to drive stick shift, because it's just pure 100% fun. After the six hours of driving with an Allied driving instructor in a stick shift vehicle, it had been one whole year since I drove a stick shift car. By the time I was driving alone with my mom's Lexus, I was itching to go back to driving stick shift. My mom had even warned me that stick shift will be twice or even more as tiring and all the cons about it (especially in rush hour traffic and bumper-to-bumper traffic) but I didn't care. All I wanted was to drive a stick shift car. Just the feeling of being able to drive both a stick shift and an automatic is awesome. I taught my friend how to drive stick shift and she learned it in half the amount of time it took me to fully learn how to drive stick shift (although I still have a few flaws such as downshifting and making the car jolt when upshifting and downshifting). I was even surprised she was interested in learning stick shift but there's no cons to that. The reason why I wanted to teach her was because first, me, myself, I LOVE driving. Second, it's the reason above listed right beside the number. Pretty soon, she'll be able to drive my car on the streets, and that's exactly what I hope will happen.
3). One of the most important reasons for me, personally, is that stick shift cars are actually at least half a second faster than automatic cars, if you're shifting right
I don't remember which source I got it from, but it's been proven that if the car was modded correctly and everything was in good shape and you were to take it onto a drag strip and race it against another car who either has similar specs or a bit lower/the same car with different mods and is automatic transmission, the car that's stick shift will take the lead. Why is that? It's simple. Now I never quite realized this until I transferred over from my mom's lexus and drove the mustang for a while. With an automatic, you cannot control how fast you can get to in each gear because the automatic transmission shifts gears for you when it thinks it's the right time to shift gears. But with a stick shift on the other hand, since you control the shifting of the gears, you can control what speed you get to in each gear. Take for example, if I were to drive my mom's lexus, I would be in fourth gear by the time I hit 40 mph. With the mustang, If I were to take each gear up to at least 3000 RPM, I would be past 40 mph. If I remember correctly, all stock engine/body parts, at third gear 3000 RPM, I would be at at least 50-60 mph. But then if I were to shift at around 2000-2500 RPM on the mustang in each gear, I would get to 40 mph in fourth gear.
5). Better fuel economy and can save up on gas
Now, for myself, I don't feel as if I did save up any gas on my own mustang because it is a sports car after all and me driving a sports car, it basically means to floor it so instead of saving up on gas, I actually waste more, but that's not the case with all the stick shift cars here. I still cannot figure out why it is but people have said that you do save more gas driving a stick shift than driving an automatic. It might also be because with stick shift, you can shift whenever u want (for instance, u can shift each gear at 1000-1500 RPMS when with an automatic, it's already set at a specific shift point depending on how much u pressure the gas pedal). But that's just a guess, I still have to do a bit more research on it.
4). This is one of my favorite reasons. If none of your family members knows how to drive stick shift (I'm the only one who knows how to drive stick shift in my family, my dad does not live with me anymore), then the car is all yours, unless they ask you to teach them.
Me, knowing how to drive stick shift AND automatic, I can drive both my mom's car and my own car. My mom? she's got a license, she can drive, but she can't drive my car. Why? Because she does not know how to drive stick shift. There is no other simpler way of saying it. At least my mom learned how to start up the car in the morning because it's just freezing cold in the morning and since my car is somewhat old with leather seats, the inside of the car is FREEZING in the mornings.
The reason why I wanted to teach my friend how to drive stick shift was because like I mentioned above, as long as she knows how to drive stick shift and can manage to drive it perfectly on the road without stalling the engine (everyone stalls the engine when they first start out with stick shift, even I did. I stalled the engine more than she did because I had no idea how it worked), she can drive any car she wants regardless of if it is stick shift or automatic. In case she, like me, had to get a car that's not new and was stick shift, she wouldn't have a headache about how to drive it. This was the same reason (well part of the reason) my mom wanted me to learn how to drive stick shift. At first she was against me driving stick shift too, but then one day I overheard her talking to one of her friends, the reason why she let me continue on to drive stick shift is because in the future, if I got my own car, it might be just like this mustang. Meaning, it might be stick shift also, not automatic. But...I won't have a headache about it because I know how to drive a stick shift. This was the point my mom was trying to get to. So in the end, I really would thank my mom for forcing me to learn stick shift because if it wasn't for her, I wouldn't be driving...a stick shift mustang right now which I highly prize.
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