American's and stick shifts (long)

["Matt & Jenai" <matjen@xsite.net>]

An interesting article in today's WSJ.  Seems like a trend that will help
keep used quattro prices depressed in the US.  Hip hop hooray!
Matt Pfeffer

Americans Shift Down and Out
Of Once-Popular Manual Transmissions
By SARA KEHAULANI GOO
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL


Cell phones may be the last nail in the coffin of the stick shift.

For 15 years, Michael Lovett reveled in the sense of control and power he
got driving a car with a manual transmission on his 50-minute commute
between Newark, Del., and Plymouth Meeting, Pa., where he is chief executive
of Lee Data Systems.

But gradually, Mr. Lovett began to realize he needed another arm. Balancing
calls to co-workers on his cell phone while eating breakfast and drinking
coffee became too arduous.

Something had to go, and on May 3, it was his Volkswagen Passat and its
stick shift. Mr. Lovett's new BMW 528 has an automatic transmission.

"I was always having to put people on hold to change gears," Mr. Lovett
says.

Drivers like Mr. Lovett are writing the obituary for manual transmissions.
For years, Americans have been bringing more nondriving activities to their
cars, turning transportation machines into minihomes. People who once
enjoyed feeling a direct connection to their engines wanted to concentrate
on weightier matters than their gears. Cheap gasoline wiped out the mileage
advantage of manual transmissions. Furthermore, using a clutch in heavy
traffic takes a toll on aging knees.

'Getting Lazier'

"People are basically getting lazier and less connected to their cars,'"
says David Cole, director of the University of Michigan's Transportation
Research Institute. The percentage of cars and light trucks with stick
shifts has dropped from 17.5% in the 1989 model year to 13.6% in 1997,
according to J.D. Power & Associates.


By contrast, the ratio of manual to automatic transmissions is about 9 to 1
in Europe, where many drivers take driving more seriously -- another reason
European cars were late to add cup holders.

In fact, try learning to drive a car with a manual transmission these days.
Most driving schools have given up teaching students the tricky two-step of
clutch and accelerator. "To train someone to drive a stick shift can ruin a
transmission," says Bonnie Sargent of Sargents School for Driving in
Pontiac, Mich. "They can strip the gears."

Finding a rental car with a manual transmission is similarly difficult:
Hertz Corp., for example, says its U.S. fleet is 100% automatic and has been
for about 10 years.

Manual transmissions are as old as cars, although the earliest models had
two gears, compared with today's usual five. In the 1930s, trying to create
more passenger room in the front seat, auto makers took the stick shift off
the floor and put it on the steering column. In 1940, Oldsmobile produced
the first successful automatic transmission, an option that added an extra
$100 to a car that cost between $800 and $1,500, depending on the model.

The automatics were a quick hit, popular with women and with soldiers who
returned from World War II with injured or missing limbs. The advent of
bucket seats in the 1960s put the shift -- whether manual or
automatic --back on the floor, and the sporty cars of the period featured
the "four on the floor."

In the past few decades, auto makers have been putting more bells and
whistles in cars, including gadgets like temperature control, compact-disk
players, telephones and computer connections, as well as automatic locks and
windows. With these features, Americans increasingly expect to be "served"
by their cars.

My Car, the Butler

"It's like having the butler coming into the drawing room and saying, 'Is
there anything I can get you?' That's what we like our cars to do," says
Jerry Herron, director of the American Studies department at Wayne State
University in Detroit. "To be shifting gears is simply too much work." Cost
cutting by manufacturers also contributed to the decline of the stick shift.
Dropping stick shifts means fewer designs and less tooling. And every
engine-transmission combination an auto maker offers must go through
emissions-certification testing, which costs about $1 million.

Perhaps the most undeniable sign of the decline of the stick shift is the
conversion of even die-hard sports-car enthusiasts, who say some automatic
transmissions can shift at least as fast as their manual counterparts. GM's
Chevrolet division produces only 30% of its Corvettes with manual
transmission. Ford Motor Co.'s high-powered Taurus SHO sedan now comes as an
automatic. Even the Porsche 911 and Ferrari F1, considered to be at the top
of the sports-car market, are produced without a clutch.

"I used to swear that I would never own an auto transmission in a sports
car," says Jerry Burton, editorial director of Corvette Quarterly who owns
cars with both kinds of transmissions. "It's a much tougher decision today
because the automatic transmission is so good."

Today, most automatic transmissions use electronics and microprocessors to
help the driver shift, rather than the old-style method of using hydraulics,
which can be more abrupt.

But out at the track, people would still kick sand in the face of someone
racing a car with an automatic transmission. The manual transmission "is a
chip you put down that says, 'I'm a serious sports-car driver,' "says Csaba
Csere, editor of Car and Driver magazine. And good as automatics are,
manuals still have a small edge in getting the car to do what the driver
wants. "Essentially, you have four tire patches between you and the road,"
says Judith Ray, a Katy, Texas, racing teacher. "With the stick and
controlling the gears, you can have total control of the car."

Something About Mary

Many auto experts predict stick shifts will survive only in niche markets,
including small economy cars, some trucks and high-priced sports cars aimed
at drivers like Mary Ann Minick. Ms. Minick, a Chicago television producer,
recently picked up her first serious sports car-a slick, silver V-10 Dodge
Viper -- at the factory in Detroit. With a price tag of $66,500, Mrs. Minick
acknowledges her car isn't exactly practical.

"You drive this car because you want to have some fun," she says. "It's
about blowing through the gears on the open road." And she can't do that
with an automatic transmission? "That's for wimps, I'm sorry," she says.

To please the few stick-shift lovers still out there, auto makers have
started offering the "shift-o-matic," an automatic transmission that lets
drivers switch gears using a stick shift but without a clutch -- essentially
a manual transmission for dummies. "They're niche vehicles to give somebody
who doesn't want to leave the manual transmission entirely," says Mr. Cole
of the University of Michigan.

Marrying electronic technology to hydraulics is what makes this transmission
possible, and it appears in several cars, including the Daimler-Benz's
Mercedes SLK and Chrysler Corp.'s luxury 300M sedans. What makes this
technology the best of both worlds? The car will shift automatically if the
driver is eating breakfast, drinking coffee and talking on the phone.