Ottawa holds out as stick shift gears down
Ottawa drivers, unlike those in Toronto still want to learn to use a manual transmission, CARYS MILLS writes.
Even when he’s in the passenger seat, and a student’s foot is on the clutch, Ron Baray feels in control.
Baray is the lone standard-transmission instructor in Ottawa for Young Drivers of Canada and one of the company’s dwindling number across the country.
In his Volkswagen Golf, Baray has refined the art of giving the right amount of instruction so he always feels in control, even when the most nervous student is behind the wheel. “In the first few lessons, they’re driving,” he said, “but I tell them every aspect of the driving part: when to clutch, when to find the friction, when to shift.”
But there’s something he doesn’t have control over: the decline of the stick shift. Come next year, Ottawa will be one of only nine places in the country where Young Drivers will continue to offer stick shift instruction, out of the 145 Canadian towns and cities where it operates.
Recently, the company announced it was phasing out stick shift instruction in its Greater Toronto Area office, where stick shift lessons will cease to be offered in February.
It no longer made “economic sense” to offer stick shift lessons there, said GTA general manager Angelo DiCicco, noting five years ago five per cent of GTA students took manual lessons. The number has now slipped to less than two per cent, he said.
“It makes me sad that it’s going the way of the dodo bird,” DiCicco said. “You have a lot more control and it’s a lot more interactive, you’re more engaged. It’s less likely you’re gonna be texting or picking your nose or having a sip of coffee at the same time.”
Although Ottawa is seeing less interest in standard lessons as well, the decline has been less drastic here, according to local Young Drivers manager Aaron Wainwright, who said about 10 per cent of Ottawa students are still learning standard transmission through its five locations. That’s down from about 16 per cent at one point during 2008, Wainwright said.
When Baray started teaching two decades ago, he was one of Young Drivers’ three stick shift instructors in the capital. Now he’s kept busy by being the company’s only stick shift instructor for Ottawa teenagers and adults.
“I love standard, I really do,“Baray said. “If it was up to me, everybody would need to learn to drive standard. Learning to drive standard means you’re learning to drive; you have total control of the car.“
JC Gobeil, the owner and operator of ProShift driver training in Ottawa, said he’s consistently on the road, teaching students standard 40 hours per week. But his business has changed in recent years, with less interest from new drivers, and more from drivers with automatic experience coming to him to upgrade, although he attributes that to his reputation growing.
“I think eventually (standard) will peter out,“he said.
Auto industry analyst Dennis DesRosiers estimates that, at the most, five per cent of cars sold in Canada this year will be standard.
“If you’re into the car culture, you want a standard transmission but ... the car culture is fading,“DesRosiers said, adding the move to automatic is partly because of improvements in those transmissions and their fuel efficiency. Traditional cheaper prices for standards are also becoming less of a factor for buyers.
There are still holdouts, though. Bruce Gammie, a 23-year-old Carleton University student, first learned to drive standard tractors on his family’s farm, south of Guelph, Ont. Although his parents have recently got rid of their standard car, Gammie said he’s sure he’ll buy standard when he gets his own, even if it’s hard to find one.
“I find it a more pleasurable way to drive,“he said.
The combination of snow and less traffic make driving stick more appealing in Ottawa than some other parts of Ontario, according to enthusiasts.
Toronto traffic makes driving standard “a pain in the left calf,” DiCicco said. “That’s the one and only reason worth the drive to Ottawa ... so I could actually get into third, fourth and hopefully fifth gear,” he said.
Less traffic in Ottawa is part of the appeal, Baray said, but so is having extra control during the winter.
“When you have snowy roads, icy roads, if you’re in an automatic and try to brake, you might fishtail, you might feel the car’s a bit out of control,“he said. “Standard, yes you need to brake, of course, to stop but there’s the method of downshifting that slows you down.”
When Baray first learned to drive as a teenager, it was with a stick shift. His family was living in Israel and driving automatic was a rarity, as it is in some European countries.
Now that he’s the one teaching, the 45-year-old insists standard driving “is not complicated” despite students having to learn to juggle the gears, clutch, friction point and more. From coaching his daughter and countless other students, he knows persisting through the difficult points, including learning to start on a hill, is worth it,
He said he doesn’t think the demand for standard lessons in Ottawa is going anywhere. The “market is very different“here and there’s just something about driving standard, he said.
“You’re in total control of this machine,” he said. “And if you do it right, it’s the most beautiful thing in the world.“