| Does anyone know of a driving school in the DC area where I can learn to drive a stick shift? |
| Do you already know how to drive and just want to learn stick shift? If so I'd recommend just talking to a friend with a stick shift car (might be hard to find) and have them teach you. |
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I Drive Smart has a course for manual transmission.
Nobody is going to want to teach you on their car unless it's an old POS and not a sports car. |
| Or buy a beater manual car |
This. I taught my then boyfriend (now husband) on my brand new (at the time) Honda Civic. I was 24 and it was the first car I had ever bought. It was painful. I was way too nice. I’d never do that now, not on a brand new car! That said, we have a 13 yo manual transmission Honda Civic (not the same one) that we’re hanging on to because it’s a a great car that’s totally paid off, and so I can teach my DCs how to drive a manual transmission car. |
+1. We used iDrive smart for my husband to learn manual. It was expensive but a FANTASTIC experience. Online scheduling and the instructor showed up and he was on time. He was very helpful to my husband. It was a good class and I can't recommend them enough!! We had previously gotten my husband general driving lessons so he could get a license prior to him learning manual and that experience was a nightmare (instructor constantly canceled last minute, didn't get all the lessons we paid for, scheduling was terrible and the instructor was so disorganized). In comparison to our other driving school experience Idrive smart was totally the opposite in a good way! |
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Make a friend with someone who owns a Jeep Wrangler with a manual.
Go to gravel parking lot or grass field. Put transfer case in 4wd low-range. You can learn how to drive a manual in about 15 minutes this way, and you’ll never stall the engine once, or burn up the clutch. I taught my kids how to drive a stick this exact way when they were 12 years old. |
A guy that couldn’t drive a stick is a deal-breaker. I wouldn’t give someone like that the time of day, let alone a relationship/marriage. That’s just something that men should’ve learned in their teens. |
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There are courses offered in other parts of the country where driving a stick is more common. If you're willing to to PA for the day, there is a school there
https://driven2drive.com/special-services/ |
This might be the stupidest thing I've ever read on DCUM, and that's saying a lot. I learned how to drive a stick when I was a teen because that's what we had. I grew up in the suburbs and everyone learned to drive. I went to college in NYC and for the first time met people who had never even learned to drive, due to no need for a family car and no need for a driver's license. I guess none of them were worthy of marriage to PP. |
Yep! I dated a guy that drove a truck. He wanted to take me to dinner in Georgetown and asked if we could take my car which was an Acura Integra--certainly smaller than his full size pickup. I said sure as long as he drives--I didn't want to drive. He agreed and got in the driver seat and then looked to the right and saw the gear shift. He then had to fess up that he couldn't drive my car. I ended up laughing--I couldn't help it. |
Pp who taught boyfriend/husband to drive stick. I was annoyed, and he definitely lost points for that, but I really liked him, and like I said, was way too nice. Now at 40, if we ever split up and I started dating again, any guy who can’t drive stick would need a lot of other good qualities to make up for that lacking
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| Just some food for thought - in 5-10 years there will basically be no stick shift, not just because of electric cars but even ICE cars, especially performance cars are doing away with them. Modern automatic shifting is now much faster than even the best race car drivers so there is really no longer any valid logical argument for the existence of manual gearboxes |
How about outside the US? It has been a couple of years since I last traveled internationally, but restricting to automatic cars only was limiting. We had much better luck because I can drive manual. |
Don’t care. I like “antique” cars anyway. I’ll always love rowing through the gears going up an on-ramp. And I’ll always laugh at “men” who can’t drive one. |