Welcome back to Shitbox Showdown! Since you all were game to play along with yesterday’s scenario, I have another one for you today. This one’s easier, and less illicit. But first we need to make our getaway:
Looks like stealth beats brute force. A couple of you pointed out that the minivan’s sliding doors provide a huge advantage in that you can already be on the move before the door is completely closed. I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right. And slipping quietly into traffic and disappearing is the way to go, I feel. Just leave it in the Costco parking lot by the airport, and Tiny will take care of it.
Today, we’re shifting gears, literally. For today’s assignment, you need to find a vehicle in which to teach your car-crazy sixteen-year-old nephew Francis to drive. The poor kid’s parents drive an Outback and a RAV4, both beige [Editor’s Note: I think this should be silver, since silver is the new beige. Beige would be cool now. – JT] , and he’s been begging you since he was twelve to teach him how to drive a stick. It can’t be easy going through high school with a name like Francis, so you feel for the kid. Driving a manual these days is like having a superpower, and you want to grant him that power, but the only manuals in your current fleet are a Fiat 124 Sport Coupe with a disassembled engine, and your beloved Callaway Twin Turbo Vette, and there’s no way you’re letting him learn on that. So it’s time to go shopping.
There are two schools of thought on learning to drive a stick: You can start him out with something cheap and easy to drive to increase his chance of success and ramp him up to the good stuff once he gets the basics down, or you can throw the kid into the deep end with something difficult, and when he masters that, know he’ll be ready drive anything. (My wife and I both learned by this method when we were young: me in a Jeep Scrambler and she in a Trans Am.) What’ll it be?
2009 Ford Focus – $2,000
Engine/drivetrain: 2.0 liter dual overhead cam inline 4, five-speed manual, FWD
Location: Walnut Creek, CA
Odometer reading: 136,000 miles
Runs/drives? Currently being used as a commuter
Full disclosure: This car is already sold. Annoyingly, the ad disappeared in the half-hour between me downloading the photos and sitting down to write this. Since I’m only using it as an example of a type of car that could be used to teach someone to drive a manual, I’m not concerned enough to go looking for a replacement. Lots of small cars are around with manuals, lots of them cost around two thousand dollars, all are dead-easy to drive, but apparently you have to be quick on the draw to get one.
You could do a lot worse than a Focus as a driver’s ed car, though. It has a good stout Mazda-derived Duratec four-cylinder, an easy-shifting five-speed, and a nice tall driving position that affords a good view of things. It’s not overly powerful, so young Francis can’t get into too much trouble, and this one comes pre-dented, so no worries about altercations with lamp posts or shopping cart corrals in whatever empty parking lot you take him to.
And for $2,000, you could just give this thing to young Francis, and instantly become the coolest uncle or aunt ever. And it will set him up nicely for the Mustang or BRZ or what-have-you that he’ll spend too much money on in college.
1999 Ford F250 Super Duty – $3,900
Engine/drivetrain: 5.4 liter single overhead cam V8, five-speed manual, RWD
Location: Prior Lake, MN
Odometer reading: 244,000 miles
Runs/drives? Just fine
But maybe, just maybe, you need a truck anyway, and it occurs to you that if you bought a truck with a stick, you could kill two birds with one stone: use it to teach young Francis, then keep it for doing truck things. You know he’d be into it – telling people you learned to drive a manual in a Focus or whatever is one thing, but learning in a Super Duty? That’s a story to tell.
There is something wonderfully charming about a full-size standard-cab truck with a stick. That two-foot-long gearshift rising up over a bench seat, with its long ka-chunky throws, and that stiff but super-responsive clutch feel just seems right. It’s what all pickup trucks were always meant to be. This truck features what I think is still the “good” version of Ford’s 5.4 liter Triton V8, backed by a ZF five-speed manual, in this case powering only the rear wheels. Sitting up in that bench seat, rowing that big lever back and forth, will make young Francis feel like a god.
But maneuvering this big beast in tight spots isn’t easy, especially when you’re still getting the feel of a clutch. The kid has big dreams when it comes to cars, but a monster like this might be too frustrating for him to start on.
Everyone who learns to drive an automobile who is physically able to do so should learn to drive a stick. I don’t think any of my colleagues around here would disagree with that, and I doubt many of you would either. Even if you never own a car with a manual, knowing how to do it, even poorly, teaches you more about vehicle control than just about anything else. As stickshift drivers ourselves, it is up to us to pass on this knowledge whenever we can. But we must choose our tools carefully. Would you rather start ’em off easy, or just go for it?
(Image credits: Craigslist sellers)
Well the question seems to be do you want a great priced manual car or a truck twice as old, twice as expensive, twice as rusty, with twice the mileage?
I have no desire to drive a Ford Superduty unless I need a moving van to move a lot of shit.
So it’s the Focus for me… though I hate the styling on that generation of Focus.
That kid will never be able to park that truck without damaging something or someone, Focus all the way.
If serious about learning stick nothing beats the first gen Insight. It is unique in that if you stall the car, pressing the clutch in restarts it without having to do anything.
2nd choice is an older higher compression TDI like my 2003. At idle the engine has so much torque you dont need to touch the throttle to take off. Just let the clutch out. It will also move forward at idle in all gears without stalling.
I used to show off to friends by putting the transmission in 5th then letting off the throttle and coasting. At 900rpm it would just keep on going at 25mph.
The newer, lower compression diesels don’t do this and stall out.
Definitely Focus. What kind of monster gives a young man a vehicle without a back seat?
Never had any problems in that area with a full size single cab truck back in high school, plenty of room. No problem with a compact truck single cab for that matter, and I was 6’4″ at the time.
Super Duty all the way. If I had driveway space I’d buy it now.
Dang. Comment posted when I hit return. My rationale is that you teach a kid to drive a big truck, and you just taught a useful job skill in addition to commuting. Also that truck is a keeper.
If Francis has not learned to drive something that big, then the truck is the wrong thing to start driving stick in. Get used to the size, then add complications. I’d start him in the car, then move up to the truck as the final exam. Later, I’d sell the car on to someone else and keep the truck. So, just like yesterday, the correct answer is both.
For Francis’ rowing lessons it’s definitely the Focus, but man I really want that F-250.
I voted Focus because learning stick on an underpowered econobox helps learning good foot work since you can’t throttle your way out of bad clutch work.
I taught all three of my kids to drive on my SL1. Clutch survived no problem since there isn’t enough power to smoke it.
My father still rocks his 99 F250 5 speed. The first gear is a granny that I normally skip if the truck isn’t loaded, so little Francis isn’t going to stall it.
I originally learned in a 73 Dodge D100 with a slant six and 3 on the tree! But that was only in the hayfields. First road car was my first car, a 78 Fairmont with a 200cid I6 and a 3-speed (on the floor this time). Was much easier in the Fairmont. Taught both of my girls in their first cars, a 95 Mustang V6 and a 93 Ranger 4-banger. Both were easy and forgiving, and not powerful enough to get into any real trouble. I’d vote Focus. A new driver will have enough to worry about without dealing with the bulk of a F-250 too. In fact, I’m thinking of getting one for the 3rd child’s first car!
That gen Focus is the worst. Especially considering what Ford was giving Europe at time. I scrolled down to see the stick and thought maybe but the F250 has a stick too. F250 all day.
I agree that driving a stick is easier with buckets of low-end torque, but easier ain’t gonna be that helpful, because it’ll establish some less-than-ideal clutch habits that will result in frequent stalls the first time Francis drives anything less robust. The Focus is the sensible choice. It’s small and light and low-powered and easy to maneuver, and will allow him to focus (ha ha) on the foot coordination. Show him how to find the point of clutch engagement without applying any gas. Show him how to find it consistently without stalling. Show him how to pull away from a dead stop smoothly. Show him how to do it on a hill without stalling or rolling backwards or over-revving. If he masters those skills in a wee four-banger, then those skills will pretty seamlessly scale up to a larger and more torquey vehicle. It won’t be as smooth a translation in the other direction. I myself learned in a 1974 Renault 12 wagon with a stiff mechanical clutch, an extremely loose and floppy shifter, and a surprisingly okay amount of low-end torque given the meager 65hp engine (my dad compared it to a torquey Model T he’d driven in his youth, crediting the wide cylinder bore). It would certainly stall if you did things completely wrong, but it wasn’t too unforgiving. After that I drove a ’77 Accord hatchback with a 5-speed, and that was so much tighter and zippier and fun. I’m glad my expectations were set by the Renault. It made driving every subsequent stick shift a genuine pleasure.
Had an ’88 F250 with a ZF 5-speed that had a granny-gear 1st and bad synchros in 3rd, which is I believe the factory configuration. When it was unburdened, we would start in 2nd, rev it up and go straight to 4th. When towing a horse trailer, we would start in 1st, lurch into 2nd and say “sorry horses!”, drift a little while double-clutching and/or grinding into 3rd, apologize to the horses again, then finally get into 4th just in time for the next stop or turn.
So no, I would NOT like another F250 with a ZF 5-speed that no trans shop wants to touch.
Funny thing is the Mazda 3 (and probably Focus) also has a problem with grinding into 3rd, because it holds the RPMs too high on upshift for some stupid emissions-control reason.
As a Francis that learned to drive stick at the age of 12 in my family’s 1998 Ford F150 (4.6 rather than 5.4), I picked the Super Duty. Also, I didn’t get made fun of in high school for my name but for my choice in shirt for the first day (a green striped polo that caused me to be called Steve all 4 years). That said, a lot of people in school didn’t have the slightest idea how to drive stick so I really did feel like I had a superpower.
Good fucking lord almighty, please don’t set Francis up with the expectation that it is acceptable to drive a bug honking TRUCK when all you need to do what you need to do is a small passenger car.
BTW I have never owned a car that wasn’t a manual. I’ve had cars with automatic transmissions, but those were company cars that I didn’t own.
The car I currently drive wasn’t even available with an automatic IIRC. Many small cars around here are/were not.
That truck looks pretty cool, but coming from a midwestern state, I am very wary of fender flares. Too many people around here use them to hide rusty wheel wells..
There’s definitely substantial portions of the box side missing behind those fender flares
That truck is suspiciously clean for something from Minnesota, I have a feeling there’s a lot of hidden horrors going on there.
If we’re buying a car to teach someone manual in, I’d pick the Focus because I believe it will do a better job on actually teaching how to drive manual. I technically learned manual on an early 80s big F-Series dump truck that had absolutely no clutch feel whatsoever. Still to this day I’ve never driven anything where you absolutely could not feel the clutch engagement point at all. However it didn’t matter because as long as you vaguely went through the motions of driving a manual, the torque and gearing was enough to save you and it was nearly impossible to stall when getting going from a stop.
What that did to me was make me extremely overconfident in my abilities. The next time I tried driving a manual car, a Fiat 500, it was a constant stall fest because you did actually have to pay some sort of attention to the clutch and give it some gas when leaving from a stop. I was lost because none of that mattered in the dump truck. I‘ve never driven a manual Super Duty and I know it’s just the 5.4 but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s very similar to that dump truck I “learned” on
For a true “first-timer” I’ll go with the truck. The torque will make it easier to learn to feather the clutch, and those long throws will be viscerally satisfying for young Francis. He has been languishing in a sea of beige mediocrity, don’t make him drive a focus! An additional advantage for the Ford is that he can learn all about 5.4 cam phasers and how to helicoil spark plug threads when they randomly eject themselves
I would have to see the frame on the truck. Its in one of the worst rust belt, road salt states in the country meaning the frame probably looks like the wreck of the Titanic.
I was pretty darn lucky to learn on my sister’s 1990 Miata. It is still the best stick I have ever driven, and made me a manual guy for life. That said, if the goal is to encourage a young person’s passion for driving, you gotta go with the Focus. It will be a lot more fun for them, and leave a better impression. I’d say, if he ends up liking it, sell it to him for $1000. He has to earn his first car. Just my opinion.
The first gen Focus sticks are the ones to get, though low priced commuter manuals of the area have a tendency to have very sloppy linkage and thus can be frustrating for the first time driver, more so now that kids are not very good at his whole Focusing on driving thing.
But an 8,800 lb tank that they cannot see over the hood of with a 1/4 million miles under it’s belt is only acceptable if it has a very low(granny) first gear to aid with learning to release the clutch in first gear to feel the engagement. Outside of that, and perhaps because dents and dings would not be lamented too much, the Focus is all around the better option here.
Sadly these are the Focus’s people call the better of them. 2010 and up seemed to have a lot of trans and head gasket issues with the turbsky versions. the basic duratec with 5 speed is boring, but should go another 50-100K with basic maintenance and proper repair of the likely few items that will need fixed in that time.
I want that truck! But in the given hypothetical, I feel like Francis’ parents are gonna make me pay for all the damage done to other vehicles by the combination of Francis’ insouciance and inexperience in that behemoth, so I’ve gotta go with the snoozy focus.
Yeah, same here, for me the truck, for a kid to drive to school and such the Focus, gas, easier to handle, less likely to cause property or personal injury damage to others.
Wouldn’t mind have the Ford for a project and errand vehicle.
Super Duty. Not only is the kid going to learn how to drive stick, but he’s going to learn how to properly park dagnabit!
Bonus for teaching a kid to drive a RWD truck in the snow. That’s exactly what I did when I taught my little sister how to drive. Yes, that task fell to me. My dad was too intense for her, he just made her try. My mom, saintly as she was, was quite frankly a terrible teacher. Anyways, with her learners permit in hand, we got a good 5-6″ of snow overnight. The next morning I tossed little sis the keys to my 2wd S-10 (replete with an open rear differential and all season tires, but hey, I had 4 sandbags over the rear axle), and we headed out. We didn’t come home until she tamed the beast. I knew if she could handle that sumbitch in the snow, she could handle anything.
I have a mix of fwd awd 4×4 and RWD vehicles, I tend to forget which one it is when I go into a corner in the snow or ice, I quickly remember and adapt, mostly somedays. The worst was I had an 850R and my wife a 10 valve 850, I would forget which one I was driving and get into some issues depending on if I needed power or not
Hopefully he’s not learning to park by doing it by feel with that thing
Who’s paying for the gas
This is why I, an English, am on your American internet.
This weird mythological thing about the magic of using a foot and a hand to change gear you guys have is so alien to us. It’s just how you drive a car.
Sure, manuals are more involving, but we have to go find an auto to drive to learn that there is a less involving alternative. I’d been driving 15 years before I drove an auto (a grandad-spec Accord). I’ve not even seen an auto version of most of the cars I’ve owned.
There are more autos here now, but when someone under 60 says they drive an auto the first thing you do is count their feet.
You make some good points but I still want a Triumph Acclaim with a Triomatic. If nothing else I would enjoy explaining to everyone that it’s like a Hondamatic but exactly the same.