Sunday, August 30, 1998

Stick shift, other options, disappearing

By Dale McFeatters

What with the cell phone, the commuter cup, the sound system with 200 tiny, tiny controls, the drive-thru breakfast and the need to gesture to fellow motorists, it's asking a lot of the modern driver just to steer the car, let alone shift gears.

Thus, the stick shift is disappearing from the automotive world, and the ability to use a manual transmission will be one more anachronistic skill, like adjusting rabbit ears or paying cash. Old-time craft fairs will have demonstrations of push starting.

A dwindling number of drivers remember that dramatic advance in motoring technology when the gear shift was moved from the floor to the steering column and then, in a further revolutionary improvement, moved back to the floor again.

Even big rugged sport utility vehicles, which presumably have some kind of macho appeal, are becoming completely automatic. Why not? The Army's main battle tank has an automatic. Many SUVs now have all-wheel drive, depriving the driver of even that choice.

The disappearance of the stick shift is part of a large plot to take all the really important decisions about driving out of the driver's hands.

The old heater and air conditioner are now a "climate control system," maintaining constant temperature and humidity so the driver no longer even has to decide whether to raise or lower the window.

Headlights on newer cars come on automatically so the driver no longer has to determine whether it's dark outside.

Dim-witted car buyers happily subscribe to options like cruise control and global positioning systems, not realizing that these "advances" will one day allow government agencies to take control of their cars. Under the guise of fighting traffic congestion and pollution, bureaucrats will control how fast your car goes and where it goes. There will be no opting out of the system by simply disengaging the clutch.

The car makers try to conceal the fact that the driver is less and less important to the actual operation of the car by distracting him with all sorts of useless information.

Many cars now come equipped with tachometers, as if the on-board computer is actually going to let the driver redline its engine. The tachometer now entertains the driver by showing at what rpms he would shift the gears -- if he were able to shift the gears. The automatic transmission, meanwhile, shifts gears when it darn well pleases.

The driver is further diverted from meddling in the car's business by digital displays that show outside temperature and other weather data, a feature that would have made sense on a Model T, whose occupants needed some forewarning of storms so they could get out, put up the buggy top and hang the side curtains with isinglass windows.

With the clutch pedal gone, the high-beam switch on the steering column and the emergency brake on the center console, the left foot is, for all practical purposes, unemployed. The left foot has no further use in driving. Not so the left knee. With the hands occupied by communicating, personal grooming and eating, the driver needs the left knee to steer with.

The loss of the manual transmission will be a spiritual loss as well. A driver with a stick shift stuck in stop-and-go traffic going up a really steep hill on a slippery road can embarrass himself any number of ways: stall, spin the wheels, roll into the car behind, violently over-rev while burning up the clutch. That driver has stared into an abyss that the driver who puts it into "D" will never see.

Grinding the gears was once an audible sign of a bad driver. But today, thanks to technology, there are so many ways to be a bad driver, maybe the stick shift is obsolete.

Scripps Howard News Service