Looking for an affordable, powerful full-size sedan with a six-speed stick shift? Forget Mercedes-Benz and BMW, or the Impala SS.

Josh Korsower and his talented crew at Three Pedals in Sterling, Virginia, have built a thriving business installing new Tremec T56 six-speed transmissions and meaty twin-disc clutches in 1991-96 GM B-Body Chevrolet Caprices, 1994-96 Impala SS's and Ford Crown Vics. Just as the automakers are dropping manual transmissions, here are three guys running a successful operation converting automatics to six-speeds. They design and engineer the conversions in-house, and they've sold or installed over 200 manual-transmission conversion kits to date.

"You've got people spending $10,000, $15,000, even $20,000 on an old car that might be worth $5,000 to $10,000," says Korsower. "There's no business case ... (for) that, but we're seeing it.

"Look," he adds, "people are passionate about their cars. They want to make 'em just right. That's not a rational decision, but we support it, of course.

Three Pedals Eli Meir Kaplan

"Price notwithstanding," Korsower says, "there are just not a lot of big, factory standard-shift sedans that are really powerful. ... When the 415-hp Chevy SS came out, it was automatic only, and the following year they added a manual. That was one of the few times you saw a modern, high-horsepower domestic sedan with a stick. But they're 50 grand new, and the SS model's going away (after) 2017. So if you want something, you've got to do it yourself."

I get to drive one of their customer cars—a massive '96 Impala SS—with a T56 Magnum six-speed coupled to a lusty, 500-hp modified Chevy V8, with ported aluminum heads and a few chassis upgrades. The pedals and shifter feel and look as though they could have been a factory installation: That crisp, six-speed stick really wakes up the car. You can wind it up, snap-shift it, let off the gas and the braaaaaaaaackkk from the Flowmasters will make you grin. Downshifts are perfect; the throws from the Hurst shifter are just right.

Best of all, you're controlling the car. There's something about a manual shifter in a big sedan that's really primal.

Korsower's two-pedal brake and clutch assembly is very well-engineered and sturdier than the factory single-pedal setup for an automatic. They also make a sturdy tubular crossmember for these cars that helps improve chassis stiffness. The cost of the 70-piece kit, which includes all the requisite hardware, is $8,895 and you can do it yourself (they'll help with directions). Or you can send them your car and they'll install the conversion and road-test it for about $3K.

You get a new T56 Magnum six-speed gearbox with a low 2.66 first gear, Quick Time T56 to LT1 adapter, McLeod Super Street Clutch and Flywheel, Wilwood master cylinder, Powermaster starter, Inland Empire balanced driveshaft, Motive Gear 4.10:1 ring and pinion (the old automatic rear is too high) and much more.

"My friend and now-business partner Seth Betaharon had a '91 Caprice that we bought at auction in college—a used police car, " Korsower says of Three Pedals' origins. "When the automatic died, I thought, 'What the hell, let's put a stick shift in here.' So we ended up transplanting a '95 Camaro V8 and a six-speed manual, and we made it work. We talked about it online, so on some of the forums people started asking, 'Would you do that for me?' And I thought, 'Sure, why not. Maybe I'll make a kit and I'll sell four or five of these things -- just having fun.'

"But the demand really surprised me. Over the next several years, we sold almost 200 of those kits. It was just word of mouth, while I was working full time. I shut it down when I went back to school and I always wanted to bring it back and expand upon it. People started asking, 'Would you put a stick shift in this car? Would you put a stick shift in that car?' So along with my cousin, Seth Potack, we decided to bring it back."

Three Pedals now gets orders for stick shifts for new Dodge Chargers. But there's one problem. "The modern computers in these new cars don't like it when you cut out an organ like an automatic transmission," he says. "So the trick is making the computer happy without the automatic.

"We're close," he insists. "We have the software from a big name, and they assure us it can be done. We're confident it will work. We haven't given it our full attention yet, but there's demand, so we're on it."

You can bet that'll happen pretty fa st.

This article first appeared in the May 15 issue of Autoweek magazine. Get your subscription here.

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