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MCALEER: Manual camp aims to shift opinions

The manual transmission is a relic of the past, fading from the options lists of everything from the Porsche GT3 to the Audi A4.
Manual driving experience
Young drivers take exotic cars for a spin during the Hagerty Driving Experience, a unique camp that introduces stick shift driving.

The manual transmission is a relic of the past, fading from the options lists of everything from the Porsche GT3 to the Audi A4.

Standard? Don't make me laugh — these days, the base transmission is far more likely to be an automatic, and if you want a stick, you might have to order it and wait for a while.

Well, fine. If people don't understand what it is about a stick shift that appeals, then someone's got to teach them. How about getting your first taste of the manual transmission in a Ferrari — would that about do it? Judging from the grin plastered on the face of the young lady who's piloting this car — a low, wedgeshaped, black Dino GT4 — around the coned-off tarmac in Maple Ridge, that'd be a big fat "Yes."

This is her first time doing the three-pedal dance, and she's doing it in a Ferrari.

That's not all. One other young gent is having a go in an Intermeccanica Kubelwagen, while another beaming youth steps out of a 1963 Austin Mini — a left-hand-drive to boot.

Welcome to the Hagerty Driving Experience, a unique event held on the West Coast for the first time in its three-year run. This is the 13th time the classic car insurance company has put on such a show, and the aim is simple: if you want young people to care about cars, and the lost art of the stick shift transmission, teach them how to love behind the wheel of something with a little charisma.

Hagerty, of course, has a vested interest in making sure that there's a continuing legacy of young folk growing up to have a love and appreciation of the automobile. If, upon being handed the keys to dear old departed grandad's E-Type, you immediately flog the thing off in the nearest auction to fund a smartphone buying spree, then all these cars will one day end up in museums, tucked away behind the velvet rope.

If so, then only storage insurance will be needed. The Hagerty business plan is more about people getting out and actually enjoying their cars. What's more, beyond the long-term planning, most Hagerty employees are at least semi-nuts about cars themselves. Their director for sales and marketing, Nigel Matthews, started out as a trained bodyman and once bought his son an Alfa-Romeo. He's out there right now in a cream-coloured MGA, teaching a gangly young fellow the finer points of the clutch engagement point.

Bigger kudos must surely go to the owners of the classic cars on display here today, as every single one is here voluntarily, and they're all about to be driven by multiple drivers who have never driven a stick before. Will there be grinding, stalling, and bunnyhopping? Well actually, not really.

There are two training groups today, with a full 50 manual transmission neophytes spread between the ages of 17 and 26, and a nearly equal split between boys and girls. Each is walked through a technical discussion of what a clutch actually does, something even those of us who have been driving stick since the beginning rarely think about, and then are shown basic maintenance on a gleaming Jaguar, fresh from the Van Dusen All-British Field Meet.

Armed with knowledge, the youths are then set free to have a go in any one of the cars here today, and the selection is mind-boggling. There are MGBs, regular flavour, supercharged, or GT. There's a Corvette drop-top, a classic 911 Carrera, a Jaguar E-Type 2+2, an Opel GT — even an ex-UN Bombardier Iltis Jeep.

This last is crewed by a gent dressed up for the day in fatigues and a blue cap, and from the bumper of his white-painted jeeplet, the Canadian flag streams proudly. Meanwhile, the diminutive Mini splashes through a giant puddle as the beaming kid inside executes a perfect one-two shift.

Most of the owners come from the Canadian Jaguar XK registry, and from the classic MG club. Some of the young people are here because they received an invite from a relative who was in one of those clubs, but there are others who heard about the event via word of mouth, and one who dropped by because his shop teacher mentioned it. They group together in gaggles, excitedly buzzing over what to drive next: the Porsche? The Ferrari? The Jaguar? Any article that laments the fading of automotive enthusiasm among the young is, to be blunt, wrong. It's not that the current generation isn't interested in cars, it's that mainstream cars have become a bit less interesting.

It you don't quite understand how something mechanical works, then it becomes an appliance, something to be replaced as soon as the new, improved version comes along. You only spend money on appliances if you need them — maybe you'll spring for the shiny version, but if you can live without it, why bother? The kids here today are getting a better look at how thoroughly complicated and interesting a car can be. They're learning how to be drivers in a world that seems more and more bent on relegating the human role in an automobile to one of a passenger.

Sure, 50 new stick-shift drivers aren't going to change the rising tide of automatic-only cars that are coming our way. However, they might just be enough to make sure that driving a stick shift doesn't become a lost art, and that classics like these remain in the place where they belong, out on the open road.

mcaleeronwheels@gmail.com