Quote Originally Posted by cobaltstarfire View Post
So, I've off and on been trying to teach my guy how to drive my car, because if I happen to drive us and something happens where he's the only one who can drive it, I want him to be able to!

He has trouble with it though, and I'm not sure how best to overcome his troubles.


He can at the very least get the car moving without too much trouble, he has trouble with coming to a stop however, and we've never gotten as far as shifting gears, starting/stopping on hills, engine breaking, ect. He's told me that stopping is weird/hard because it feels very backwards compared to an automatic. (I don't understand what this means, stopping in an automatic doesn't feel all that different to me compared to stopping in a manual)

I'm not really sure how to move him forward from this point. When I was taught how to drive my dad used the very steep driveway a lot to teach me how to manipulate the clutch, and get used to coordinating my feet between clutch/break/gas but we don't have access to a hill where we can safely do that sort of thing.


In particular I'm interested to hear how other people who drive manual come to a stop. I personally stop/slow down in different ways depending on the situation and nature of the stop. I usually stop by pushing in the clutch and using the breaks (sometimes I engine break a bit too).

Also the vehicle is just a little Honda fit, so it won't do anything like grab onto gear and drive all by itself like a larger vehicle might, rather it'll just stall out without too much jumping or running. I don't know if that makes it harder to teach or easier.
Does he fit in the Fit? If he's tall, he may have issues shifting the clutch without banging his knees on the steering wheel. When I tried to learn stick, my GF's car was simply too small for me to drive unimpeded, so I never got the hang of it.