Last Call: Double Clutch
Pleszczynski, Wladyslaw
by Wladyslaw Pleszczynski Double Clutch NEED ANY FURTHER PROOF THAT America's gone soft? Go as I did to a Honda dealership, preferably the kind that has 2o0 Accords in stock. Then ask a salesman...
...r 74 March 2o o o _9 The American Spectator...
...Back in 195o my parents purchased their first new American car...
...Then I stopped paying attention, perhaps diverted into a false sense of security by a wife who independently of any effort to please me has always insisted that our cars be manual drive...
...In fact, he added, the president often had to return it to the garage himself-because his Secret Service aides didn't know how to shift gears...
...My father knew what he wanted going in...
...When shown one in his favorite color (maroon), he took out his checkbook...
...How macho can a 4x4 drive be if its transmission is automatic...
...To his eye none looked better than a rocket-nosed Studebaker Champion...
...Yet again we see that even when his countrymen were off course, Ronald Reagan always had his priorities in order...
...Then ask a salesman to show you any with manual shift...
...if they were going to it would have to be automatic shift only...
...It simply wasn't cool to drive any other way...
...Two-limbed driving wasn't driving...
...I could think of no better line of work: Unlike a car driver who could only shift twice, a trucker had more gears to get into than I could keep up with...
...Entire lines of cars, such as Chrysler's Sebring convertible, no longer bother to offer the option...
...A star journalist I know confesses he doesn't know how to operate a stick shift...
...The only problem was that automatic shifts got moved to the floor as well...
...Spot checks at parking lots reveal a near monopoly for automatic shifts...
...Some sports car...
...Besides, from my pre-child restraint perch between the front and back seats, I liked to observe the driver in action, and not enough went on if he didn't have to shift gears...
...EARLY ON I FIGURED OUT there were two types of cars: those that picked up speed at a steady rate from a standing stop, and those that rocked to the stop-and-go of manual shifting...
...In those pre-freeway days there were plenty of traffic lights along the way, and thus many opportunities to drown in the awesome sounds emanating from a Mack engine during acceleration and swim to its undulating rhythm as the truck driver shifted gears...
...When told it was the only one in stock with an automatic transmission, he signed the check...
...The modestly priced, weak-engined Champion hardly rated such convenience...
...You'll also be lucky when, on handing you the keys for a test drive, he doesn't look at you as if you were really weird...
...To rent a stick shift you pretty much have to travel to Europe...
...THE BEST PART OF THE COMING of Volkswagen bugs to the U.S...
...To my young mind automatic transmissions belonged in fancy, powerful automobiles, such as Lincolns and Cadillacs, or Oldsmobiles and Buicks with their famous "Dynaflow...
...The salesman couldn't believe his easy luck...
...Having struggled with the clutch (and much else) on the prewar V-12 Packard they'd purchased the previous year, he wanted a modern car...
...The problem became more pronounced after I moved east during the seventies...
...Brian Lamb was doing a show from the Reagan ranch when the subject of Reagan's old ]eep came up...
...by the sixties was their introduction of a fourth gear to American driving...
...No one had taught them how to use a clutch, and now they were afraid to learn...
...I NEVER LIKED THE CAR...
...The best part of family outings to the big city from my California home town was being on the highway next to diesel trucks...
...Bucket seats and floor shifts became standard...
...As a Californian I was shocked to meet adult New Yorkers who'd never driven a car...
...A young political reporter from California (for crying out loud) admits to the same disability...
...The SUV industry appears to be moving in the same direction...
...You'll be lucky if he has more than two available...
...There was something mesmerizing about a driver's having to coordinate all four limbs at once: right foot accelerating as the left released the clutch, left hand on the wheel as the right shifted from first...
...ONCE IT WAS THE OTHER WAY around...
...Two friends I made, brothers who had moved west from Connecticut, surprised me by revealing they could only drive automatic shift cars...
...Detroit got the message...
...ALREADY DURING COLLEGE I CAUGHT my first glimpse of the future...
...By then, many of my contemporaries were moving the gear shift from the steering column of their hopped-up cars to the hump above the floor board...
...For him the music never stopped...
...The car rental industry has been no help...
...The former head of Reagan's Secret Service detail chimed in to recount how much Reagan loved to drive it...
...NOT UNTIL THE HONDA DEALERSHIP did it hit me: Americans have ceased changing gears...
...What's more, it put the stick back where it belonged: on the floor...
...THE OTHER NIGHT ON C-SPAN the extent of the problem hit home for good...
Vol. 33 • March 2000 • No. 2
