It turns out that the best theft-deterrent you can buy for your car these days is a manual transmission.
Only about 8 percent of new cars sold in the U.S. are equipped with a manual transmission these days compared to 22 percent in 1985. And this means that fewer and fewer people each year know how to drive a car with a manual transmission.
So it makes you wonder why anyone would choose the five-speed manual transmission over the six-speed automatic for the Fiat 500. This goes double if you live in the suburb of L.A. where I do, which has hills kind of the way San Francisco has hills.
But there’s no scent of burning clutch material after driving the Fiat 500 around my town.
You can be stopped on a hill at an angle that makes you think the car is pointed toward the heavens like a passenger jet on takeoff, and yet there’s no roll back when you start doing that three-pedal shuffle to get going when the traffic light turns green. And no roll back means no fear of punching the grille of the car behind you, no desperate clutch slip as you struggle to engage the clutch just the right amount to build forward momentum without stalling the engine.
Turns out that the Fiat 500 has hill-start assist, just like so many vehicles do these days — full-size pickup trucks as well as small subcompacts.
What happens is, the car maintains brake pressure for a short period of time after you lift your foot from the brake pedal and begin to apply the throttle to coordinate the getaway with the clutch. It’s one of those miracles of electronics, and you can learn more about it from HowStuffWorks.com .
Of course, it’s not a total miracle, as it most of the time these things apparently are calibrated to keep your vehicle in place with the brakes on slopes that have no more than gradient of 3 percent, and there’s a hill only a half block away from my house that’s so steep it makes bicycle riders weep and pedestrians faint.
But thanks to hill-start assist, the Fiat 500 with its manual transmission is usually as easy to drive around my town as an old Volkswagen Beetle. As Deputy Managing Editor Caroline Pardilla has already pointed out, this is the right car with which to teach someone to drive with a stick shift. The Mazda 2 would be at the other end of the spectrum, of course.
Don’t be looking for any great revival in manual transmission usage, though. A manual transmission used to be a lot cheaper than an automatic and also offer much better fuel economy besides, but the difference between the two is far less these days. Plus the new breed of affordable dual-clutch automated manuals combines the no-slip powertrain efficiency of a manual transmission with the automated clutch engagement of an automatic.
But at least a manual transmission has a fun factor that you can’t beat, since you always feel like you’re operating the car instead of it operating you. Of course, you could say the same about driving a tractor (although even tractors have automatic transmissions these days).
Oh well, at least there’s that theft-deterrent thing.
Michael Jordan, Executive Editor, Edmunds.com @ 8,275
ptcdawg says:
10:13 AM, 09/26/11
I've driven a stick my entire life, never had a single problems starting on hills etc.
I hope they never go away....
ed124c says:
10:18 AM, 09/26/11
Tractors, I would imagine, are not fun to drive, so I have no problem with ALL tractors having automatics.
However, cars are a different thing-- for a certain percent of the driving public that wants to have fun while driving. Unfortunately, that percentage is dropping. Skynet is coming to a planet near you. But it looks like OnStar might get there first.
cr_driver says:
10:19 AM, 09/26/11
" since you always feel like you’re operating the car instead of it operating you"
Well, generally speaking at least, you can feel the same using paddle shifters.
greenpony says:
10:23 AM, 09/26/11
It's a theft deterrent only for those would-be thieves who don't know how to drive stick. Just because the manual transmission take rate is lower doesn't mean the knowledge isn't there. There are plenty of people out there who know how to drive stick but choose the automatic anyway.
mrb5091 says:
10:43 AM, 09/26/11
greenpony,
I think the point is that as manual vehicles lose market share, fewer people ever learn in the first place. I agree that there are many who drive automatics while knowing how to drive manual, but this percentage is likely declining along with the market share.
As there are less manuals on the road, there will be less opportunity to learn.
adavis2493 says:
11:13 AM, 09/26/11
My question is, where can people learn how to drive a stick shift?
I learned from my parents, who both had manual transmissions, but if you are in a household of automatics, and have no friends with manuals, where can you learn?
yellowbal says:
11:29 AM, 09/26/11
@adavis2493: You just go test drive a used car that has a manual. The salesperson will try to teach you so he can sell the car.
mrb5091 says:
11:38 AM, 09/26/11
yellowball is correct, that is exactly what happened when I bought my first manual car (friends/parents didn't know how).
csubowtie says:
11:48 AM, 09/26/11
In the case of my wife, I explained how it works to her, then told her to just buy one. Within a week she had it down pat, and now refuses to go back to automatics. It's really not that hard, it just takes practice to get the feel of each particular vehicles clutch. Stick to sidestreets and low traffic areas you're first week and don't worry about it. Chances are that once you learn you'll wonder why you haven't been doing it the whole time.
90in55 says:
11:54 AM, 09/26/11
Hill-Start Assist is cheating.
greenpony says:
12:59 PM, 09/26/11
"Hill-Start Assist is cheating."
I suppose hand-brake assist is cheating too. But if cheating lowers the odds of me front-ending the car behind me, I'll cheat on every steep hill.
bimmerjay says:
02:50 PM, 09/26/11
HSA is fantastic, though some systems do work better than others. Every MT car should have it. Most of the time you don't really need it, but when you're parallel-parking on that steep hill in San Francisco you definitely come to appreciate it.
HSA was standard on a car I had in 2006 - a driver rear-ended me at a stop sign (on almost flat ground no less) and later saw that my car was a manual when we were exchanging information. He accused me of rolling backwards into him to his insurance company. When I presented the standard HSA evidence (along with a video of it operating on my car, at the same intersection no less) both insurance companies ended the dispute and declared the accident 100% his fault.
sanfrandan says:
02:55 PM, 09/26/11
InsideLine has really been singing the praises of stickshifts. Let me be the flame-broiled contrarian. My first two cars were sticks. I've driven them in hills, and canyon-carved, and I will never buy one again. If life were a car commercial, where mine was the only car on the road, then I might get a stickshift. Since, however, I typically drive in the city in awful traffic, a stickshift is way more work and no more fun.
My current car has one of those dual-clutch automatics, and gets better mileage than the manual version.
agentorange says:
03:14 PM, 09/26/11
"You can be stopped on a hill at an angle that makes you think the car is pointed toward the heavens like a passenger jet on takeoff, and yet there’s no roll back when you start doing that three-pedal shuffle to get going when the traffic light turns green."
This statement tells me that you have never been taught to drive a stick properly. Hill starts require the use of the handbrake. Do what you suggest during a driving test in most of Europe and you will be failed.
greenpony said:
"I suppose hand-brake assist is cheating too."
No, it is the proper way to do it. Rolling back is not an option.
lucien4 says:
03:51 PM, 09/26/11
I'd feel more safe with a hand-brake. Imagine you're going uphill and it's stop and go traffic. I rather use hand-break several times then some button that doesn't have any feel to it.
Much easier but often these hand-brakes get killed for a button to make room for an extra cupholder:-(.
bimmerjay says:
04:10 PM, 09/26/11
"I'd feel more safe with a hand-brake. Imagine you're going uphill and it's stop and go traffic. I rather use hand-break several times then some button that doesn't have any feel to it. "
What button? Hill start assist works automatically using the car's stability control system. It senses the car will roll backwards before you do and holds the brakes automatically, usually for about 2 seconds or until it "feels" the car will successfully move forward. There are no buttons to push.
There is virtually no downside to a (good) HSA system. I have had it since 2005 and it pretty much works perfectly every time in the situations I've encountered, and I've driven on the steepest city streets in the world. There is no advantage to the handbrake method.
22respeedwagon says:
08:53 PM, 09/26/11
My 1986 Subaru had a hill-holder clutch. Brilliant.
cmj9120 says:
05:57 AM, 09/27/11
All Fiat 500s have the Hill Start Assist feature. Manuals and automatics.
bigmik1021 says:
09:43 AM, 09/27/11
@ed124c, you've clearly never driven a tractor
chunky_azian says:
10:21 PM, 09/27/11
bimmerjay, for // parking on a hill, I would not want HSA. With a regular handbrake, I just need to for the clutch to roll downhill. With HSA I would need to shift in and out of gear. that can get annoying for a tight space