Stick shifts going the way of the dinosaurs

Manual transmissions are apparently going extinct.

There are a few last-ditch holdouts keeping the stick shift alive, but almost all are sports cars, including the Porsche 911 GT3, Subaru BRZ, Mazda MX-5 Miata, Honda Civic Si, and Toyota GR86.

Who know the Honda Civic had a sporty version?

This makes me a little sad. For many years, I drove a stick shift.

Today, I shift gears via a series of sad, little buttons on the dashboard, but it’s not uncommon for me to still reach for the stick and clutch out of habit, especially when the road is slippery.

I was taught to drive a stick shift by a girlfriend named Jennifer Tanner, who drove a Nissa Sentra with a stick and offered to teach me to drive it when I was a teenager. She took me to a parking lot one afternoon, and within an hour, I was driving stick like a pro.

Jen was a good teacher.

Nearly every car I owned up until about six years ago was a stick shift, and boy, do I miss it. Even though a manual transmission admittedly requires more from me in terms of effort and attention, it also makes me feel better connected to the car. When I’m driving stick, I feel like the car and I are simpatico.

Driving an automatic transmission has never come close to giving me that same feeling.

Unless things change in the automobile market, or unless I hit some weird midlife crisis that requires me to purchase a sports car to make me feel more relevant and virile, it’s possible that I have driven the last stick shift of my life, which makes me a little sad.

Not only do I miss driving a stick shift, but I’ve never been a fan of things coming to an end. For someone with a persistent, relentless existential crisis, endings, even in automobile technology, is rough.