Gearing up for a world free of ‘manual’ cars

There is almost no practical advantage to having a gear lever and a clutch pedal. For most drivers of most cars most of the time, an automatic transmission system is just as efficient, just as versatile, just as reliable, and considerably easier. PHOTO| FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • In an automatic, all of that happens with nigh perfect precision ... automatically. The origins of our obsession with manual gearboxes are distinctly British and 1950s.

  • The British, culturally and emotionally, are boy racers. If they were really honest about their relationship with their cars, they would do up their garage doors with fly buttons or zippers.

  • When they motor, they are driving a stallion. Their cars are agile and muscular. 

There is almost no practical advantage to having a gear lever and a clutch pedal. For most drivers of most cars most of the time, an automatic transmission system is just as efficient, just as versatile, just as reliable, and considerably easier.

Especially in traffic.

Yet we have clung steadfastly to the manual gear system, and we suffer from that choice perhaps 100 times on an average driving day.

To change gear (about five times per kilometre around town) we have to let go of the steering with one hand, find a small stick between the front seats, release the accelerator with one leg, depress the clutch with the other, wiggle the little stick, release the clutch and resume pressure on the accelerator.

And judging by the noises to be heard at any Nairobi street corner, we don’t do that very well. We do it too soon or too late, we over-rev or labour the engine, we ride our clutch pedals, we change gear with a jerk or a lurid grating noise.

In an automatic, all of that happens with nigh perfect precision ... automatically. The origins of our obsession with manual gearboxes are distinctly British and 1950s. The British, culturally and emotionally, are boy racers. If they were really honest about their

relationship with their cars, they would do up their garage doors with fly buttons or zippers. When they motor, they are driving a stallion. Their cars are agile and muscular.  

The Americans, by contrast, have a more lounge-lizard approach to motoring. They don’t so much drive as sail.  And, indeed, most of their cars are the size and shape of large boats.

Both the boy racer and the lounge lizard  of course suffer from the macho thing; but in different ways. Proof of the 1950 Brit’s peckerhood was vested in the image of Brands Hatch and Stirling Moss. He was “hot” (or nowadays we would say “cool”) if his car looked and sounded sporty.

Lots of dials and switches, a tight-fitting bucket seat, a rasping engine note, a little steering with a wooden rim and holes in the spokes, wire wheels with a wingnut, and, yes, that stubby little grab-it-and-grunt gear lever.

The Americans, on the other hand, found the movie-star limo a more spunky symbol. For them, the hot/cool car had to be a larger-than-life show of affluence and confidence. With some practical justification, they considered a pokey little sports car with bucket seats inimical to a positive relationship with the opposite sex. Cars should be at least 6ft wide, and the front seat should, at least conceptually, double as a bed.

And you definitely didn’t want to be wasting an arm and a leg changing gear! Or your eyes watching dials. 

One way or another, both the guys and the gals on both sides of the Atlantic got what they deserved and/or wanted, and the marketing systems feeding these appetites have remained polarised way beyond traffic trends or technological refinement.

Kenya got the British version, but the times are changing. Kenyans are buying more automatics than ever before. So many times more that, within a decade, they could be in the majority.