Shiftless (Saturated Market)

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Shiftless

There are few people who, in my mind, are more self-delusional and pitiable than people who shift their automatic transmissions. Those poor souls who put their automatic shifter over to the side, and insist on pushing it up and down towards those + and - symbols that are supposed to represent up and down gears. And it's a growing group! Plenty of people who dropped an extra $1000 per car to avoid learning how to drive with an extra pedal are trying to pretend they're street racers who know just how to get the most out of their car. It's so prolific, Mazda, among other car companies, is using this behaviour in their advertisements (and not just in SUVs where you have little choice...watch the latest Mazda 3 commercial, you'll see what I mean).

Now before I really begin proper, let me qualify something: there is NOTHING wrong with driving automatic. Automatic transmissions were invented for a reason. Actually, several reasons, two of which are traffic jams and hills with intersections on them. My issue is with people who get an automatic transmission, and then try to behave as though they didn't.

It's a way of lying to yourself, but it's also not as effective as you might think, because these pretenders have forgotten the meaning of the entire premise: it's automatic. Not semi-automatic, not kinda-automatic, not automatic-most-of-the-time-except-when-I-don't-feel-like-it. Automatic.

If you know how an automatic transmission works, you're one of 3 people: an automotive repair technician, an absolute car nut, or somebody with an internet connection and plenty of free time. But as someone who could be debated to be the 2nd or 3rd type, I've gone to the trouble of learning. Let me tell you, these things are a masterpiece of engineering. Whatever group of automakers sat down and banged this out ought to be commended for coming up with something so clever. And here's a nifty bit of information about automatic transmissions that not only shows how brilliantly they were designed, but also how nearly foolproof they are: various driving conditions (the speed of your car, how straight it's going and how flat it is) affect the ability to shift. In other words, if the car doesn't WANT to change gears, you CAN'T make it.

Automatic transmissions are designed to eliminate bad driver decisions when it comes to shifting in order to preserve the gear box and give you a smoother ride. It makes smart decisions about what the engine is doing to optimize performance and acceleration. So not only do you not NEED to try to tell it what gear to use, it knows better anyway. You don't have to tap it to the - symbol to get it to gear down for better acceleration, you just have to jam your foot down and it will kick into overdrive. Incidentally, as somebody who's driven standard his whole life at varying degrees of skill, this is PHENOMENALLY fun. It's rare that in everyday driving you'll have to floor it, so getting to do so every time you need to pass somebody on the highway or simply want to merge is a giddy little thrill that makes me forget how foolish I look in an automatic car*.

So we've seen that it's totally unnecessary, especially considering people paid a fair amount to get that transmission that does it all in the first place. So why would people do it?

We need to remember that people are not exactly rational. We, as humans, excel at doing things that are foolish or ill advised. Smoking, drinking, gambling, self-mutilation, crime...these things aren't exactly healthy. But we do it anyway. So how does faux-shifting come into it?

Popular culture has made racing "cool". Movies, television, motorsports, they've all ingrained the idea of the fast-driving gearhead into a cool personage. And never do you see these icons drive an automatic car. No, they drive stick. They need ultimate control of their vehicle, and they know how to use it in just the right way. There's also the violent jerking of the driven (no pun intended) racer aggressively changing gears; you can't judge desperation and intensity just through their face, or their turning...okay, you can, but it's not the whole picture. And dropping that pedal to the floor only works at the start of the race as the tires spin and smoke. That intense constant shifting adds excitement and emotion. Often the way they do this simple act shows their personality and state of mind. Contrasting the jerky motions described above, the driver who calmly and smoothly changes gears during a race has a different allure, that of the person who never cracks under pressure.

I could go on forever. Finally, there is the fact that driving stick takes a little more skill than driving standard. I know, I'm biased, but any extra steps involved in driving makes it a little more complicated. You take the normal necessities of driving awareness (speed, other cars, pedestrians, road conditions, laws), and add on that you have to know what gear you're in, when to shift, and how to shift without taking your eyes off the road to look. And of course knowing how to combine the pedals. Even veteran drivers still stall sometimes. So that adds to the perception of coolness, that you can do this thing that not every driver is able to.

I would liken it to Guitar Hero. If you can't play guitar, but want to pretend that you can (and that you can do it well and in a famous rock band), this is a reasonable facsimile. You know it's not real, everyone ELSE knows it's not real, and there's a machine doing all the actual work. But you can get a contact buzz off of it, and dammit, it's fun.

In my opinion, that seems to be the basis. Driving stick is a skill that not everyone has, and that has been glorified by society and the media. So in an attempt to at least pretend you're part of that group, the allure of trying to fool your transmission isn't that hard to understand. There are plenty of things I can't do, but sometimes pretend I can.

But it doesn't cost me a thousand dollars.

Until next time,

* - People who are accustomed to driving standard always look a little silly in an automatic car. Whether it's the fact that they keep kicking the left side of the car floor or braking incorrectly because they don't have the luxury of gearing down when stopping, there's just a sense of barely perceivable discomfort, like somebody's made one of their shoes just the tiniest bit smaller.