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Visitors to the upcoming Los Angeles Auto Show will see supercars, hoverboards, self-propelling luggage and all manner of new transportation options.
But they'll be hard pressed to find a clutch pedal or a stick shift. Available in nearly half of new models in the U.S. a decade ago, the manual transmission is going the way of the rumble seat, with stick availability falling to about a quarter this year.
Once standard equipment on all motor vehicles, preferred for its dependability, fuel efficiency and sporty characteristics, the four-on-the-floor is disappearing from major car manufacturers' lineups — and subsequently from the sprawling auto show's floors.
Consider, too, that electric vehicles don't even have a transmission.
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The Disappearing Stick Shift: Less Than 3% of Cars Sold in the U.S. Have Manual Transmissions
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TOO BAD YOU CAN'T BUY a voodoo globe so that you could make the earth spin
real fast and freak everybody out.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Valkor on Friday November 18 2016, @02:44AM
I view it as an anti-theft feature.
The last time I took it to a car wash nobody knew how to drive a stick. Pretty funny stuff.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Friday November 18 2016, @06:19AM
Soon only car thieves will know how to drive a stick. (Hardly rocket science.) The main theft deterrent is not the skills of the thief, but the vanishing resale market. What will a thief do with a car that nobody else can drive?
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday November 18 2016, @04:48PM
Sell it for parts, same as they do with any other one. Selling the whole car is too risky, it's much more likely to be identified that way. Although I guess a manual transmission makes that particular part harder to sell too?
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Sunday November 20 2016, @10:18AM
Well yeah, but in the same vein, you still have thousands of other parts to sell from the car. When the initial cost of acquisition is near zero, selling everything but the manual transmission will still yield one heck of a profit.
Just to clarify, car manufacturers design their cars with the largest commonality of parts, to reduce duplication and costs. As a result usually you can easily switch transmissions in a car from manual to auto with minimal part swap. Also, it means 98% of the parts on a manual car can still be sold on to auto car owners as replacements.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @09:58PM
This has happened. Two thieves tried to steal a Corvette. Turned out neither one could drive a stick.