The fact that you have opened the pages of this magazine implies a certain mental disturbance known among clinical psychologists as "car nuttiness." This involves irrational enthusiasm regarding such social pathologies as law-breaking highway speeds, deafening engine sounds, and unhealthy olfactory attractions to odors produced by methanol, castor oil, and nitromethane. There is no known cure for such disturbances, although the nannies of the world are seeking to excise the essential stimuli by substituting such benign power sources as the hybrid, the fuel cell, and the electric motor in place of that fuming, Wagnerian devil machine known as the internal-combustion engine.

The New Age automobile will be silent and syrupy to a fault, an environmental paragon embodying all the passion and panache of a Waring blender. Gone will be the obscene exhaust sounds, the screech of rubber, and the howl of gears, replaced by the courtly hum of low-voltage motors and muted servo systems, all controlled by fussy little microprocessors marshaling you along vast, computer-controlled freeway networks.

We are already getting a peek at the future. For example, the once-beloved manual transmission is about to join the drum brake, the flathead, and the rumble seat as an automotive relic. Research by the consulting firm PWS Auto-Facts reveals that sales of vehicles in the U.S. with manual transmissions has slipped to a mere 16.9 percent of the market. Even in Europe, where the manual has dominated at more than 90 percent of sales, there has been a recent slippage to 86.9 percent, and the trend is downward.

There are many reasons for this shift (or lack thereof). The new computer-controlled five- and six-speed automatics are almost as efficient as manuals. They are nearly as cheap to manufacture, and they offer hands-free driving in clogged urban situations, where the right hand can be employed to wield a cell phone or PalmPilot and to change CDs. As an interim step for the lazy and the ham-fisted, there are such crossover devices as Porsche's Tiptronic and DaimlerChrysler's AutoStick, to name but two of a new genre of automatics that can be shifted like manuals. But the traditional four-, five-, and six-speed manual transmissions so beloved by us car nuts seem headed for the scrap heap, auguring yet another step into the seamless and sterile world of the anesthetized cybercar.

There was a day, of course, when all automobiles were controlled by manuals. American cars, with their larger displacements and torquier engines (thanks to cheap gas), ran on three forward gears, whereas smaller, lighter European brands favored four. Then came Oldsmobile in 1937 with its limited-production "Automatic Safety Transmission" that led three years later to the optional ($57!) Hydramatic, and with that, the floodgates to shiftless motoring were opened.

True believers reviled the early "slush-boxes" that hit the postwar market with such names as Powerglide, TorqueFlite, Fordomatic, and Dynaflow. They were all dreadfully inefficient and helped to generate a reverse enthusiasm on these shores for British imports from MG, Jaguar, Austin-Healey, and others that featured smooth-shifting four-speed manuals mounted not on the steering column but snugged against the driver's right knee where God had intended them. The Big Three then responded with "four on the floor" during the muscle-car revolution of the '60s and '70s. Anyone growing up during this period who wanted to gain stature in the crazed, American Graffiti-style car culture sure as hell had to learn how to use a manual gearbox properly. The double-clutch, the heel-and-toe, and the drag-racing "board shift" had to be mastered. Matching revs via the tachometer to execute perfect downshifts was expected, as opposed to the current technique of merely punching the clutch and jamming the shifter into a lower gear.

Recently, I had occasion to speak with a chief instructor of one of America's largest and most successful high-performance driving schools. He noted, "You can't believe how little people know about using a manual transmission. They haven't the foggiest notion how to match revs or downshift, much less heel-and-toe under braking. Ninety percent of them learned to drive on automatics, and what little they think they know about manuals for fast driving is so far out in left field it's useless. We have to teach 'em all over again."

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