By Tom Vanderbilt

On a recent Sunday morning, in the weedy parking lot of a strip mall in Wayne, N.J., I'm sitting at the wheel of a 2017 Volkswagen Jetta. From the passenger seat, Vishnu Persaud coaches me on working the clutch: "So you're going to slide your foot off the pedal. Just let the bottom of your foot pivot off your Achilles' heel."

Persaud, an accountant and part-time driving instructor from Fort Lee, is giving me a tutorial -- or rather a refresher course -- on how to operate a manual transmission. Though I've barely touched a stick shift in the last 40 years, as with riding a bicycle, you never fully lose the muscle memory. "You didn't stall," he said at the end of our lesson. "That's unusual."

What brought me here was my 16-year-old daughter's declaration, a month or so after getting her learner's permit, that she wanted to master a stick shift. I neither own nor have access to a manual transmission vehicle (and good luck trying to rent one), so I did what any sane parent would: I sought to outsource the task. A hurdle immediately blocked my plan: The rare driving school that teaches this skill requires students to be 18, with a valid license.

So I booked a lesson with Persaud. I'd found him through Stick Shift Driving Academy, a nationwide network of instructors who, in their spare time, sacrifice their cars -- and clutches -- to novices. I figured relearning would help me competently teach my daughter. I also sought insights into who, in 2025, wants to master a manual transmission. According to last year's EPA Automotive Trends Report, fewer than 1% of new cars sold in the U.S. have clutch pedals (in Europe, that figure, while declining, still exceeds 30%).

Multiple factors fuel my daughter's desire to learn the skill. She's curious. She senses stick shifts are "cool." She loves the Forza car-racing videogame. And she likes to argue that a used manual-transmission car would both cost less and require an interplay of hands and feet that would thwart her from getting distracted by her phone. Also at play, I suspect: the Gen Z affinity for old-school technology -- everything from vinyl records to analog cameras -- and the desire for physical authenticity in our increasingly digital world.

Persaud says many of his students hope to rent a car overseas, where automatics are sometimes harder to come by, or have significant others who own stick shifts but lack "the patience to teach them." Still others are simply "manual curious." The day before my lesson, Persaud had taught an older doctor from New York City who wanted to learn because "all his friends were buying Porsches and Miatas."

While manual transmissions were once common enough to be called "standard," in recent decades, they've lost some of their cost advantage over automatics, noted Bill Stokes, a product planner for Subaru. Now, the two systems offer comparable fuel economy, and cars that come with a stick-shift tend to be pricier, racier models -- such as the Subaru WRX or BRZ, which most buyers drive with the optional third pedal, Stokes says.

"People buying manuals are this hardened core of enthusiasts," Stokes said, laughing. ("We are the guardians of a dying art," declares the website of the Manual Gearbox Preservation Society.)

It remains an open question whether the manual can mount a comeback in a world of increasing automation and electric drivetrains with single-speed gearboxes. But it's worth noting that 2024 marked the 18th consecutive year of growth in sales of vinyl records, an industry once declared dead.

Giuseppe Frustaci, the Austin, Texas-based entrepreneur who founded Stick Shift Driving Academy nearly a decade ago, noted that "nobody's ever going to buy a Toyota Sienna with a manual transmission." One reason is that it doesn't exist. "But that's a car that takes you from A to B," he says. "People who are going to buy a stick shift are driving from A to A, for the experience."

One such driver is Ashley Stuart, a 30-something healthcare worker in Florida. At first, the longtime automatic driver found the transition to manual slow going.

"People were kind of saying, 'Ashley, what's the holdup?' " She felt isolated, anxiety-ridden. "I thought, if I'm having this issue, let me start posting on social media and see if other people are having the same problem."

Now, as @ash_dacat, she has more than 100,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram. She demonstrates "rev matching" in her Honda Civic Type R while offering tips on how to navigate a drive-through without stalling.

"I feel like you build a very strong bond with your car -- you learn the clutch, the bite point," she said. "I don't want to be mean to the automatic, but when I drive my mom's SUV, it's boring for me. I want to get in a fun car, I want to shift gears."

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 08, 2025 17:30 ET (21:30 GMT)

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