Friday, February 08, 2013

HEY MAN, HOW DO YOU DRIVE THIS VETTE?

They haven’t taught how to operate a stick shift in Driver’s Ed for, it seems like, eons.

This reminds me of when about a dozen of us were called into Los Angeles to pass a test on driving our state undercover cars. The test was held on the roof of a parking garage. There were four women in the group. All the men passed. None of the women passed because the two cars in which we were tested had stick shifts and the poor gals didn’t have a clue on how to operate them.

CARJACKER COULDN’T DRIVE A STICK SHIFT
An attempted carjacking in Florida speaks to the increasingly lost art of driving cars with a manual transmission: the would-be thieves couldn’t figure out how to steal a Chevrolet Corvette

Car Pro News
February 6, 2013

Randolph Bean was sitting in his bright yellow Corvette when two men approached, one with a gun, outside the Orlando Regional Medical Center, MyFoxOrlando.com reports.

Bean, who barely saw them coming, said they tried to force open the door. When it flung open, he was dragged out, Bean told the TV station and website.

Then, things started getting strange.

One of the thieves, pointing the gun at him, demanded to know how the car operates. They couldn’t start it, and Bean said he had to tell them repeatedly to push in the clutch. They still couldn’t figure out how to drive it. Eventually, they ran off, leaving the cars keys behind but making off with Bean’s wallet, phone and house keys.

“My first thought was I guess we don’t have driver’s ed in school anymore because no one knows how to drive a stick,” Bean told MyFoxOrlando. “And my second thing was, ‘don’t shoot me because you can’t start the car.’ I’m trying to help you out here.”

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