NEW YORK, New York - The manual transmission is plummeting in popularity. Last year a paltry 7% of new cars sold had the stick and clutch. The percentage of men expressing a preference for the stick has fallen from 50% in 1985 to 11% today.
Who to blame for this drop in the preferences of men? Women, of course:
One reason is that most women prefer automatics. "I tried a stick shift once, and then I faced a hill, and I never tried again," said Danielle Wilt, 20, a junior at York College in York, Pa.But after heaping blame on women for most of the article, the author drops this in at the end:
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As Volkswagen salesman Ronald Sowell said of his wife, "I tried to teach her manual, but she didn't want to learn. She said that's why they make automatics."
"Ladies putting on makeup while they're drinking coffee and talking on their cell phone — they don't have time to shift gears," said Scott Parsons, a sales associate at Mantrans, a manual transmission repair shop in Tallahassee, Fla.
In fact, while interest in manual transmissions among men declined steadily for a generation, interest among women has grown steadily from 4 percent in 1985 to 15 percent last year.Hopefully, all of this means that young car thieves will leave my ride alone. Or maybe a carjacker will order me out of my car, then order me back in to drive.
2 comments:
This woman taught her husband (and several other family members) how to drive a stick shift and now he won't go back to an automatic.
There you go! I just hope that for the rest of your driving life and mine, manual transmissions continue to exist.
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