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Baby, Can You Drive My Car? Not If It’s a Stick Shift
Manual transmissions are increasingly rare in America, foiling teenage carjackers and frustrating valet parking lots
Mary Sampietro got the scare of her life five years ago. It left her disappointed in America’s young people.
The mental health professional was in her stick-shift 2016 Jeep Patriot in a rough neighborhood in her native Houston when she rolled down the window to smoke a cigarette. Suddenly, a teenager stuck a gun in her face, ordering her out of the car. He got in but only made it to the next traffic light before stalling the engine and running away.
“I was like ‘How can you be a carjacker and not know how to drive a manual?’”
Stick shtick
For Sampietro, who learned to row her own gears in a 1970s Datsun pickup truck with no power steering, the skill’s increasing rarity is a frequent source of annoyance. Her husband’s career requires her to attend events with mandatory valet parking. The job often attracts college students. One particularly bad experience convinced her that they often lie about being able to handle the odd stick shift like hers.
“This young man ground my gears in a way that made me want to throw up,” she says. “I turned around and parked way down the street and walked. I did not tip.”
Automatic transmissions are so prevalent that few young people have ever sat in a car requiring both hands and feet to operate. Even if their parents know how, it is unlikely that they own one on which their teens could learn. In 2020 the percentage of new cars sold in America with a manual transmission fell below 1%. But that still isn’t zero, which can get awkward.
Hardly anyone thinks as much about parking other people’s cars as Tim Maloney, an industry consultant from Felton, Calif., who has worked at companies including SpotHero and ProPark Mobility. He got his start 27 years ago as a teenage valet—one who knew how to drive a manual. Maloney recently posted a photo of a parking sign on LinkedIn that specified “NO STICK SHIFT VEHICLES,” asking his contacts whether valets with the skill are “a thing of the past.” It set off a flurry of comments.
Employing manual drivers is “akin to searching for a needle in a haystack in today’s market” lamented one parking executive. Another replied that “it’s no longer worth it to require, you’re not going to lose that much business.”
The result can be red-carpet treatment for this rarefied class of drivers. Garrett Williams, a 40-year-old actuary from Denver, rarely frequents fancy locales, but on a trip he took with his wife to a resort with mandatory valet parking he was told that the one employee who could drive his manual Subaru Crosstrek wasn’t there. As a courtesy, he was allowed to park right in front of the entrance.
“For the remainder of our stay, they said: ‘Oh, this is the stick shift guy.’”
Older valets, often immigrants who learned to drive on a stick, still have to reassure drivers nervous about their transmissions.
“They always ask,” says Ricardo Salazar, shaking his head. He has been parking cars at Sear House, an eatery in Closter, N.J., since arriving in the U.S. from Colombia eight years ago. “In this country everyone drives an automatic. In my country 99% of cars are manual.”
Jaden Lamar knows how to drive a stick despite being only 24, but he says very few of the young people who have worked for Lux Valet, the Atlanta parking company he co-owns, can. After one embarrassing experience at an upscale restaurant, he decided to allow manual drivers to park themselves in a “VIP” spot. An employee claimed he had experience but, as the guests sat down at an open terrace with a view of the driveway, he burned their clutch, wafting a nasty odor into the dining area.
“They were side-eyeing us,” says Lamar.
To Dennis Chernyukhin, stories like that smelled like a sweet opportunity. After the Lincoln, Calif., auto enthusiast’s employer was acquired six years ago, the former tech executive shifted into a new business: He started a manual driving school.
His former Silicon Valley colleagues were skeptical, but Chernyukhin sold his first company after it grew rapidly and he now runs SHIFTR, which trains drivers all over California with plans to expand nationwide. Chernyukhin’s new career still elicits questions.
“People are like: “Really, you do this full time?’”
Perhaps the best measure of his success? He has only had to replace one clutch so far.
There may be hope for the stick shift yet if 23-year-old Ohioan Spencer Kaup is any indication. Even though nobody in his family drove one, his love of racing videogames led him to learn. That came in handy when college classmates asked to borrow his car.
“I was like: ‘Literally, you cannot drive it.’”
After college Kaup found his tribe when he worked for a computer-repair company. “Computer people are car people,” he says. About half of his co-workers drove manuals, too. Kaup had to jump through a few hoops at the dealership to secure his latest ride, a 2024 Honda Civic. He isn’t alone, though: Stick shift sales have rebounded over the past three years, fueled by younger buyers.
Nervous parents might help. Aside from being a theft-deterrent, manuals make it nearly impossible to text and drive or for irresponsible friends to take the wheel. One study showed that young people with ADHD are more attentive when driving one.
The days when stick shifts were significantly cheaper than automatics are over, but Kaup says he would pay more in the future to be able to keep driving one. With his rare skill, he might even find a lucrative sideline driving those owned by other people too.
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