Diatribe: Four-speed transmission once were rites of passage

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I’ve written previously of my disdain for those who have a high-performance car like a Corvette or a Mustang GT and equip it with an automatic transmission. A performance car without a manual transmission is like a buffet without Jell-O. What a waste!

People wax nostalgic about the halcyon days of muscle cars. Oh, if only they could have been lucky enough to grow up during that era. I did and I can tell you that automobile-wise they were wonderful years. Few things sound sweeter than a big-block Chevy V-8 winding through all four gears of a Muncie T-10 transmission.

If you had an automatic transmission, the only way you can rev up your engine to impress those around you was if you put the car in neutral — and even then if you put it back into drive too quickly the awkward lurch forward wasn’t the only jerk one would see at that intersection.

Granted, there were several automatic transmissions that earned their keep — especially at the drag strips. In many, if not most cases, a Dodge/Plymouth 426 HEMI had faster quarter-mile times with a 727 Torqueflite automatic than with the heralded four-speed manual. But except for maybe the legendary Ford C5, those are the only two automatics I can recall that carried water. And it should be noted those were at the drag strips, under controlled conditions.

One of the auto great magazines is Hemmings Motor News. Its premise is to sell cars of all ages and genres. I subscribe to it and play a little game whenever I receive my monthly copy. I pretend I’m going to buy one vehicle that’s listed for sale in the book. I usually only consider the high-performance vehicles from the good old days of my youth.

I have one major criterion: I will not consider, nor look twice, at a vehicle that has an automatic transmission. Let’s just say on Page 117 there’s a 1967 Dodge R/T two-door hardtop with a 440-cubic-inch V-8 and tripower (or as it was called by Chrysler, a “six-pack”). Neat car, I must say. But let the word “auto” or “727” or anything similar rear its ugly head and before you can say “I’m out of here” I’m already on Page 121. However, if it would have read “Four-speed with pistol grip” or something that connotes a manual transmission, it would be on my wish list before you could say “Cool.”

Some newer vehicles have automatic transmissions but to appease the “performance” crowd the manufacturers have added steering-wheel-mounted paddle shifters so you can zip along and “shift” gears like you’re a born-again Mario Andretti. Get a life, Mr. Phony! As I’ve often said, probably too many times, if you want to shift gears so badly you should buy a manual transmission in the first place; to show their appreciation the manufacturers will throw in a free clutch.

Full discloser, I have “waste” in my own family history. In 1960, when I was in high school, my grandfather bought my grandmother a 1960 Chevrolet Impala two-door hardtop so she would have a car to drive when she needed it. I’m sure he went to the local Chevy dealer and saw it sitting on the showroom floor and said, “I’ll take that one.” Why else would he buy my aging grandmother a new car with a high-performance 348-cubic-inch V-8 with 300 horsepower?

As a teenager I must have really been envious, huh? Don’t bet the farm, Gomer. It had a turbo-glide transmission, one step above Chevy’s vaunted power-glide automatic. When my grandmother decided she didn’t like the car, which came about a few minutes after she saw it, I probably could have conned my grandfather into either giving it to me — or selling it to me on a long-term payment plan (probably until his will would be read). But the fact that it was an automatic transmission instead of a stick shift — even a three-speed column shifter — my lips were sealed.

Granted, it would have been an acid trip’s dream sequence if my grandfather had bought her a car like this with a four-speed manual gear box. Even in a rum-induced coma I couldn’t fathom my beloved grandmother speed-shifting a four-on-the-floor shifter from second gear to third. I don’t remember what finally became of that Impala but I seldom think of it because it was an automatic.

I haven’t owned a car with a manual transmission since my 1985 Ford Mustang GT. I’ve outlived the dinosaurs, several world wars, a number of skirmishes and police actions, and even the death of Walt Disney. I’m into comfort, which means I’m not about to take my left leg and give it a job. There’s a lovely D on my gear indicator that does a nice job for me and my family. However, just because the Ice Age and I have reached parity doesn’t mean I don’t long for the good old days when I could look down at my transmission shifter and see a nice, white ball with 1, 2, 3, 4 and R written on it.

Truth is: You could have an iPod that stored 18,545,383,632 tunes on it and you wouldn’t have near the enjoyment as we had “back in the day.”

Al Vinikour is a Midwest-based freelance auto writer. Proving a mind is a “terrible thing to use” he sometimes sits in traffic and ponders about things — generally auto-related — that make him mad. Believing the “pen is mightier than the sword” (and generally results in a whole lot less jail time), he vents his anger through a word processor and produces the Driver’s Side Diatribe column. Email him at vinikour@comcast.net.