Tip 7: Learn to drive stick shift to save money and headaches

I recognize that this particular tip might be a bit difficult for most people these days since it appears that the cars sold or rented in the United States have more computer-controlled parts, including the transmission. So while Americans are being kind of forced into driving with automatics (with very limited opportunities to learn to drive stick as their availability continues to diminish over time), that’s actually a bad thing when trying to self drive in places like Europe, where smaller, simpler, and more efficient cars are the norm rather than the exception.

Consider this. We’ve found that when we rent vehicles overseas (especially in Europe), automatic transmission cars typically cost about 30% to 50% more than equivalent manual transmission cars. Often times, the automatic transmission vehicles aren’t even available. We’ve explored this before to see whether we could split up the driving duties (often at additional cost due to the extra driver). And almost all the time, we wind up deciding that I’m the sole driver due to my familiarity with driving stick shift as well as the increased cost of not hiring stick shift.

So the takeaway from this experience is that if you must have an automatic transmission vehicle, you need to book well in advance to try to maximize the chances of securing such a vehicle. As you can imagine, when Americans drive abroad, that drives up the demand, but the supply of automatics remain limited in Europe. That said, outside of Europe in countries like Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, this is not as much of an issue since automatics are quite commonplace in those countries.

So if you want the flexibility of being able to drive stick, I’m not really sure what you can do if you don’t own a manual transmission car. There are used cars out there with manual transmission, but you really have to look hard. Even when I wanted to replace my old stick shift with another stick shift, I had a hard time doing so because they’re simply not that common in the US anymore. Thus, I’m stuck with an automatic, and I don’t really have an opportunity to teach Julie and Tahia (when she’s old enough) how to drive stick unless we get lucky and chance upon a manual further down the line.

I guess having a crash course (no pun intended) in being steady with the clutch and not stalling while in Europe is another option as often times the necessity of the situation is a pretty effective way to pick something up quickly. But if you do go this route, make sure you’ve budgeted enough time on your trip to do a few trial runs at a parking lot or some not-so-busy street. The idea is to get comfortable with changing gears (including downshifting if you have to slow down at a curve or something), and especially figuring out how to stop the car and get moving again in first gear. Then, build yourself up as you drive out of the city and into the more relaxing countryside. Over time, you’ll pick it up. It’s not that hard, but it does take getting used to.

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