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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,

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Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff Lauren Bolgabam. Here, only around one percent

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Speaker 1: of new cars sold in the US came with three

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Speaker 1: pedals and a stick shift. Whole generations of American drivers

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Speaker 1: have been able to get by without learning to drive

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Speaker 1: stick at all. At the same time that sales of

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Speaker 1: these manual transmissions were dwindling, the market became saturated with SUVs, crossovers,

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Speaker 1: and luxury pickup trucks. It all comes in stark contrast

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Speaker 1: to the buying patterns in Europe and Asia, where small

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Speaker 1: manual hatchbacks practically run the streets. Of cars on the

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Speaker 1: roads there have manual transmissions. But even on those continents,

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Speaker 1: trends are changing. So why is that. First a look

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Speaker 1: at the US, it seems like an inherently American trait

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Speaker 1: to make everything as big and cushy as possible, including cars.

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Speaker 1: Investors began engineering the predecessors to today's automatic transmissions as

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Speaker 1: early as the turn of the twentieth century, but it

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Speaker 1: wasn't until the nineteen forties that efficient hydraulic transmissions came around,

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Speaker 1: and it wasn't until the nineteen fifties that they became

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Speaker 1: an option for consumer vehicles, albeit a premium one, but

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Speaker 1: customers were liable to take that option because they didn't

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Speaker 1: want to deal with shifting through their commute and because

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Speaker 1: they could easily cover the additional cost. By nine fifty seven,

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Speaker 1: automatic gearboxes had already taken over of the US market.

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Speaker 1: Around the same time, American cars ballooned to much greater

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Speaker 1: sizes than their European and Japanese counterparts, a trend that

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Speaker 1: wouldn't be interrupted until the oil crisis of the nineteen seventies.

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Speaker 1: But in the post World War Two era, those other

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Speaker 1: places stuck with small, manual cars because they were more

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Speaker 1: fuel efficient and cheaper to produce. Inexpensive cars were a

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Speaker 1: necessity in the countries that saw their land and factories

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Speaker 1: ravaged by the war. Meanwhile, the US was oil rich

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Speaker 1: and shielded from the economic fallout of the conflict, so

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Speaker 1: frugality was less of a concern. Americans back then and

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Speaker 1: today take significantly longer commutes by car, while Europeans are

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Speaker 1: more likely to take shorter road trips and rely more

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Speaker 1: on public transit. It's another big reason that Americans so

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Speaker 1: quickly latched onto the automatic one segment, where manual transmissions

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Speaker 1: were able to maintain a foothold in the US was

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Speaker 1: the dedicated sports car market. Many of these cars, from

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Speaker 1: makers like Porsche, Ferrari, and Datson were foreign imports. They

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Speaker 1: usually had no automatic option at all. If they did,

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Speaker 1: it offered subpar performance and driving feel. The cars like

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Speaker 1: these cemented in American minds the notion that shifting your

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Speaker 1: own gears was a rite of passage for real car enthusiasts.

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Speaker 1: In the modern day, however, even sports cars are shedding

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Speaker 1: their three pedal options. Modern automated gearboxes, be they torque

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Speaker 1: converter or dual clutch, can now match or surpass the

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Speaker 1: performance offered by old stick shifts. Worldwide, Ferrari and Lamborghini

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Speaker 1: have no manual transmissions, and the Corvette just got rid

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Speaker 1: of its manual option a few years ago. Toyota came

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Speaker 1: out with their much anticipated sports car revival, the Supra,

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Speaker 1: also with no manual afford until recently offered manual only

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Speaker 1: performance packages like the Focus R S, Fiesta ST and

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Speaker 1: Mustang GT three fifty. They've all been canceled in the

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Speaker 1: last few years. Cheap compacts across the globe were also

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Speaker 1: seeing automatic options because things like continuously variable transmissions or

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Speaker 1: cvt s and dual clutches are now rivaling the efficiency

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Speaker 1: offered by a stick shift. There are signs that even

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Speaker 1: in Europe, automatic cars are taking over. For instance, Ford

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Speaker 1: Motor Company reported that automatics accounted for just ten percent

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Speaker 1: of the cars it's sold in Europe, but it was

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Speaker 1: The company attributed the growth to some new features like

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Speaker 1: cruise control and park assist that aren't compatible with manual transmissions.

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Speaker 1: The USA Today reported that in the UK, automatic cars

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Speaker 1: outsold manuals for the first time in sighting statistics from

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Speaker 1: the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. The technologies we

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Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, like dual clutches and cbt s, which use

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Speaker 1: computerized systems to shift the transmission into the right gear,

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Speaker 1: have made automatics more efficient and economical to drive. A

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Speaker 1: few automakers today do still offer new manual cars. It

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Speaker 1: may depend a year to year, but this category currently

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Speaker 1: includes entries from Porsche, Honda, Toyota, Chevrolet, Hondai and Jeep.

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Speaker 1: As manual options decline, a subset of enthusiasts have caused

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Speaker 1: second hand manual prices to trend upwards significantly. In the

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Speaker 1: case of Ferraris from around the year two thousand. Their

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Speaker 1: last manual cars can go for nearly double the sale

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Speaker 1: price of a comparable car with an automated gearbox. Some

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Speaker 1: custom shops have even taken to outfitting formerly auto equipped

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Speaker 1: car ours with stick shifts in order to introduce new

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Speaker 1: stock and cash in on the trend. Just as the

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Speaker 1: supply of three pedal cars is dwindling, the height for

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Speaker 1: them is through the roof, quickly turning them into a

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Speaker 1: speculative asset of ballooning value. Today's episode is based on

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Speaker 1: the article why the stick shift is going Extinct on

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, written by talent Homer. Brain

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Speaker 1: Stuff is production of I Heart Radio in partnership with

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Clang.

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