Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio, Hey brain Stuff Lauren Bolgabam. Here, only around one percent of new cars sold in the US came with three pedals and a stick shift. Whole generations of American drivers have been able to get by without learning to drive stick at all. At the same time that sales of these manual transmissions were dwindling, the market became saturated with SUVs, crossovers,
and luxury pickup trucks. It all comes in stark contrast to the buying patterns in Europe and Asia, where small manual hatchbacks practically run the streets. Of cars on the roads there have manual transmissions. But even on those continents, trends are changing. So why is that. First a look at the US, it seems like an inherently American trait to make everything as big and cushy as possible, including cars.
Investors began engineering the predecessors to today's automatic transmissions as early as the turn of the twentieth century, but it wasn't until the nineteen forties that efficient hydraulic transmissions came around, and it wasn't until the nineteen fifties that they became an option for consumer vehicles, albeit a premium one, but customers were liable to take that option because they didn't want to deal with shifting through their commute and because
they could easily cover the additional cost. By nine fifty seven, automatic gearboxes had already taken over of the US market. Around the same time, American cars ballooned to much greater sizes than their European and Japanese counterparts, a trend that wouldn't be interrupted until the oil crisis of the nineteen seventies. But in the post World War Two era, those other places stuck with small, manual cars because they were more
fuel efficient and cheaper to produce. Inexpensive cars were a necessity in the countries that saw their land and factories ravaged by the war. Meanwhile, the US was oil rich and shielded from the economic fallout of the conflict, so frugality was less of a concern. Americans back then and today take significantly longer commutes by car, while Europeans are more likely to take shorter road trips and rely more
on public transit. It's another big reason that Americans so quickly latched onto the automatic one segment, where manual transmissions were able to maintain a foothold in the US was the dedicated sports car market. Many of these cars, from makers like Porsche, Ferrari, and Datson were foreign imports. They usually had no automatic option at all. If they did,
it offered subpar performance and driving feel. The cars like these cemented in American minds the notion that shifting your own gears was a rite of passage for real car enthusiasts. In the modern day, however, even sports cars are shedding their three pedal options. Modern automated gearboxes, be they torque converter or dual clutch, can now match or surpass the
performance offered by old stick shifts. Worldwide, Ferrari and Lamborghini have no manual transmissions, and the Corvette just got rid of its manual option a few years ago. Toyota came out with their much anticipated sports car revival, the Supra, also with no manual afford until recently offered manual only performance packages like the Focus R S, Fiesta ST and Mustang GT three fifty. They've all been canceled in the
last few years. Cheap compacts across the globe were also seeing automatic options because things like continuously variable transmissions or cvt s and dual clutches are now rivaling the efficiency offered by a stick shift. There are signs that even
in Europe, automatic cars are taking over. For instance, Ford Motor Company reported that automatics accounted for just ten percent of the cars it's sold in Europe, but it was The company attributed the growth to some new features like cruise control and park assist that aren't compatible with manual transmissions. The USA Today reported that in the UK, automatic cars outsold manuals for the first time in sighting statistics from
the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. The technologies we mentioned earlier, like dual clutches and cbt s, which use computerized systems to shift the transmission into the right gear, have made automatics more efficient and economical to drive. A few automakers today do still offer new manual cars. It may depend a year to year, but this category currently includes entries from Porsche, Honda, Toyota, Chevrolet, Hondai and Jeep.
As manual options decline, a subset of enthusiasts have caused second hand manual prices to trend upwards significantly. In the case of Ferraris from around the year two thousand. Their last manual cars can go for nearly double the sale price of a comparable car with an automated gearbox. Some custom shops have even taken to outfitting formerly auto equipped car ours with stick shifts in order to introduce new
stock and cash in on the trend. Just as the supply of three pedal cars is dwindling, the height for them is through the roof, quickly turning them into a speculative asset of ballooning value. Today's episode is based on the article why the stick shift is going Extinct on how stuff works dot com, written by talent Homer. Brain Stuff is production of I Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Clang.
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