It’s just more fun! Manual cars give you the control. You have to read the road ahead of you and think what action you need to take, when to manually change up or down the gears in relation to your speed and road conditions, unlike an automatic car, which does all the thinking for you.
I live on a very twisty road which has some very challenging bends plus steep climbs in places. I enjoy the journey from and to home in the manual car. Slowing into the bend then accelerating out requires lots of concentration and manual gear changing. You need to be a thinking driver to drive manual!
When I started the ‘The Driving School’ back in 2005, the first car I used as the school car was a manual. Back then car yards started to bring in cheap Japanese automatic cars and people got lazy and didn’t want to put the extra time in to learn to drive a manual. The difference in lesson time to learn a manual is about five lessons, after that, it is the same as driving an automatic. The first five manual driving lessons are all about getting control of the clutch.
Living in a country area the demand for manual driving was still high as many of the young people drove tractors and Land Rovers on the farm, but automatic cars came thick and fast! The request for automatic lessons increased to the point I was losing a lot of business. I was forced to buy a second car, an automatic. I still had some manual driving lessons but nowhere near the number as before.
In the last two years I have noticed an increase in demand for manual driving lessons, this is because the Police, the Armed Forces, and some government- backed apprentice schemes require you to have a manual driving licence. In addition, the increase in immigrant drivers coming from countries where manual driving is the most popular form of driving, still require manual tuition. Most of Europe, India and China are manual driving countries.
If you are thinking of manual driving lessons, it really is only a little more effort at the beginning but well worth it in the end.
