Long story short: I’m (24M) American, and I’m visiting my long-distance Romanian boyfriend for the first time soon. In Romania, most cars are manual - including all the ones owned by my boyfriend’s family (I’ll be staying with them). I’ve never driven a manual before. His dad told me he can give me a quick lesson, and that I’m welcome to use their cars if I want; otherwise, I can rent an automatic. I don’t have access to any manual cars here in the U.S. to practice on, so I’m not sure what to do.
Overall (and this is from a lifelong manual driver), I go much more by feel than I do any particular number on the tach, under normal driving circumstances.
i can imagine. i’ve mostly had automatics, but when i was looking for my first car one of the candidates was an old saab with no tacho, it only had little indicators on the speedometer for where to shift. in that situation i imagine muscle memory is created pretty quickly.
There’s some of that, but you really do get a feel for the car, where it likes to be, how it likes to be treated/driven, where its limits are, and so on. As others have said: it absolutely does help you forge a more detailed perception of what your car is doing, and where the limits really are.
oh i know, i learned to drive on manual since most cars are manual here, i just haven’t owned one myself.
that said, with electric power-steering and throttle-by-wire, there’s no feel to get. it’s all just dead, no matter how fun the clutch is.
I mean, you say that, but I’ve driven a modern Porsche with all of those thing electric, and it’s absolutely still fun as hell. Sure, the steering isn’t quite as communicative as older models, but it’s still VERY good. They’ve done an incredible job with the feedback dynamics.