Where is this obsession with sticks coming from?

There are times when I still get excited when I see a stick. Most of those times are when I'm out walking in a forest and spot a mighty fine unit laying somewhere in the moss. You know, one of those sticks that has a cool bendy shape but at the same time is still straight and strong enough to support your weight. One of those sticks you want to feel in your hands, one that you can feel helps you get around.

I might be the only one, because the rest of the world seems to be obsessed with the old fashioned stick shift. I've been hit in the face by a lot of them the last few days. You can't open a car related website or one sticks out at you. Almost every car manufacturer seems to want to chime on shifting by hand, and some are even introducing completely new cars with the knob in the middle of the two front seats.

You'd think that it's clear that people want to drive with a shaft in their hands, while fondling the knob on top. But that's not true. People want you to think they do. They want you to think they can handle the shaft therefore are better drivers than you. I never got that. Especially not in the upper echelons of supercars we seem to be getting them right now.

I'm really struggling to understand why anyone would want a third pedal and a six speed manual in a 1.842 hp Hennessey Venom F5-M? With that much power, a manual simply doesn't make sense anymore unless you want a car that is very, very hard to drive and very, very unforgiving on shifts. It'll be a constant fight to even get to the grocery store in that thing.

And then there is the Ferrari 12Cillindri Manuale, which isn't really a manual at all. The thing has a DCT (Dual Clutch Transmission) for Gods sake. That essentially means the automatic tranny always is in two gears at the same time, but one isn't engaged to the drive train. That last one is preselected because the software in the car predicts it's the next one that will be selected. That's what makes it really quick on gear changes.

Making that work with a stick shifter, means Ferrari just makes you think you're in control when you're not really. A manual can't work with a DCT and no, not even Ferrari miraculously found a way to make it work. It just worked around it and copied the idea from Koenigsegg.

In the Manuale the shifter and third pedal aren't physically connected gearbox at all. So it's not you that is (pre-)selecting a gear. You're just the one telling the car that it's time to shift to that gear when you fake-shift into it. In other words: Ferrari just changed the interface from flappy pedals behind the steering wheel to a stick next to your bum and added a bit of software that punishes you when you move it into the wrong position at the wrong time (the engine will cut out).

Other fun fact: the 12Cillindri Manuale won't be able to reach top speed in manual mode. That's because the seventh and eighth gears are only accessible in automatic mode. Ferrari decided that an open gate shifter with eight slots wouldn't look good, because of heritage and Italian perspective. Also the 0-100 kph sprint time of 2.9 will only be possible in automatic mode. Which, to me, is Ferrari telling everyone they're adding the semi-fake manual option because high paying weird people want one. They also know they won't actually be using it when they're not trying to impress someone, because it actually drives better when it's in automatic mode.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not ranting here. I just feel there is a disconnect between what makes a manual better. I didn't start with finding a cool stick in the forest for no reason. The stick I described there gives you a feeling that it's doing something helpful, something real. A stick shift can be that, but it needs to be in a specific car where it makes you feel that.

One instance that comes to mind is the time that I drove an old Land Rover 110 through a forest trail. Every shift I executed was full of intent, had a purpose, but more importantly, made me feel that I was actually changing something mechanical in the car. I cluncked, cracked and probably broke off some teeth in the process (something has to break on a Defender, right?). Every gear shift was me working with the car to get the the best out of it for the situation I was in. But no shift went without a little discussion. Every one of them came with the Defender asking "Are you sure?" And that communication is what makes shifting great. It's a connection to a machine that you won't get any other way.

To me it's not about control, or being able to show that you can shift while driving fast. To me it's about having that conversation, that connection with the car. There is a balance to that. Not every manual works with every car and not every car works with a manual. I mean, I don't really like shifting in my daily driver at all. Could do without it. But thinking back to that drive in the Defender in the forest just wouldn't be the same with me just yelling POWERRR and plowing the thing through the mud (which I totally did in the Evoque which was also part of the trip).

So I think this "we need more manuals" conversation is one we shouldn't have with the cars that are coming out now. At least, not in the insane supercars that are being produced with them now. At the same time I don't think we need to dread the 'disappearance' of the manual that much. The classics in which they add something to the experience will be around for a while and increasingly only make sense for people like you and me: the once that want to feel something while driving.