Quote:
Originally Posted by Norm Peterson
Actually, the trend started a good bit before the 70's with my parents' generation (closer to your great-grandparents' generation).
In some respects, your generation is as much a victim of the previous three generations' trend to automatics as it is to anything within itself. On average with each successive generation, there's been less exposure to MT driving. Makes MT driving kind of an "out of sight, out of mind" thing for lots of people, must be difficult because hardly anybody they know drives stick, etc.
Norm
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The Hydramatic was the result of years of trying to make cars shift themselves and make driving more appealing and easier for the masses.
Until the 1930s car companies hadn't standardized even the manual transmission operation of their cars. It was a real chore and kinda dangerous just to drive a car down the street to the market for milk and bread in the early years of the automobile.
Here's a good video on how to start and drive a 1916 Ford Model T:
Obviously just getting out of your driveway in the morning was a pain.
Now, by the 1930s automatic chokes, the electric starter, and the now standard setup of clutch pedal on the left, brake pedal in the middle, and accelerator on the right had made cars much easier than that Model T to drive, but you still had to shift constantly. Many companies had developed a semi-automatic transmission, which shifted from 1st-3rd on it's own but you still had to clutch-in and engage the clutch going from a dead stop in first gear.
The invention of the hydraulic torque converter in 1939 made it possible for the first time to have a completely self shifting car.
When you watch that Model T video you'll understand why there was such a demand to make driving a car easier. Car companies knew if they could made it easier to drive, they'd get more customers. Not sure too many teenage girls were going crazy to get their driver's license like they do today when they had watched their Dad do a jig and a two step with a dosie-doe just to pull the car out into the street lol!
Today driving a manual is fun, especially in the right car. But I've driven an old manual before, a 1938 Pontiac Fireball Straight 8 with a 3 on the tree, and it's fun too. I guess it's more fun when you want to learn to drive it, as opposed to all the people who back then HAD to learn how to drive it. There was no such thing as an automatic anything. If you wanted to get your driver's license, you had to know how to shift as well as stop at red lights and made left turns in traffic.