Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for May 12, 2023

Little help. The lingo is lost on me. Is JJ mixing golf clubs with stick shifts?

Pretty shifty language there Janis! 8^ )

A poll was taken…. Apparently in the south ‘Straight Drive’ is a term used.I’ve lived in the south for the last 55 years and never heard this expressed.Now I can use the term as my most fun car is a straight drive.

POLLWhat do you call a car that is not an automatic transmission?

Standard 61Stick (or stick shift) 150Straight Drive 5Manual 99Other 8

Ever heard of four on the floor?? Three on the tree?? I can drive those too!!

So she going to gear up for this challenge?

Taught daughter to drive a stick when she was 15, she never forgot. When she went to basic training in the military, she was the only person in her training outfit who could do that, lot of their vehicles were still stick.

Straight, or stick shift, the same thing. The new anti-theft device.

Four on the floor and a fifth under the seat

I taught my kids stick. It has the bonus of making their cars theft-resistant.

It might be that the differentiation between straight shift and stick shift is where the shifter is located. Straight shift for the “three on the tree” steering column set up and stick shift for the “four on the floor” where the shifter is in the midline, where the console is now located.

I’m surprised they bought a car with a stick shift, maybe it’s the new Cadillac CTS

I can drive a straight. Made our boys learn and we required their 1st car be a stick. When my son went on the obligatory European vacation after college when they need to rent a car, he was the only one who could drive it.

no a strait shift or a four in the floor or a 3 on the tree manual transmission

Why is a manual called a straight drive?A column shift works through a complicated linkage, but a straight drive (aka 4-on-the-floor) connects straight to the transmission.

“drive a STRAIGHT”? I’ve only ever heard “drive a STICK”

By the time Janis gets used to driving this new car, it will be time for a new one. A “self driving” car.

Good thing she didn’t say, “I can RIDE the shift out of a straight stick!” No room for misinterpretation there.

You betcha she can! Atta girl Janis!

Must be a regional thing. In 66 years I’ve never heard a manual transmission called a “straight”…

I had to drive my friend’s van home from the hospital. It has a lane sensor and kept pushing me over because I was too close to edge of pavement. I thought it was a bearing going until I saw the little light on the dash.

“How do you drive an adjective,?” I asked myself. Thanks to those who clarified “driving a straight.”

I hate it when people tell a long story in these boxes, but I’m gonna do it anyway. In high school, I took driver’s ed, and I drove my dad’s car(s) quite often. Toward the end of my college years, my grandma and dad bought me a VW Beetle, the car of my dreams. He and I chose one, and he drove me to the dealer to pick it up. As we walked out of the showroom, he said something like “Well, you drive your new car home: see you there!” I gulped internally, but said, “OK, dad!” I realized I hadn’t told him I had NEVER driven a stick shift, even in driver’s ed! But I had imagined it so often that I was able to creep home, mostly in second and third gear, and mostly using low-traffic back roads. I didn’t tell him this story until many years later.

“Shift” may be a misspelling.

For those who are confused, a straight is a stick is a manual. (Is the only true driving.)

Is Arlo calling “a straight” a stick shift transmission? If so then that puts Arlo and Janis smack dab in the baby boomer generation. I don’t know what year or decade saw the end of the stick shift but it was in the boomer years for sure. Any time after that the stick is as mysterious as a rotary dial telephone. True that many sports cars and heavy duty trucks still have manual transmissions but the average daily drivers are mostly automatics.

You all know what they call us pluggers who now drive automatics; old and shiftless.

Learned on a stick shift, which taught me how to listen to the engine.

A friend got into my car and saw the manual shifter. He said, “I see you have a poor man’s anti-theft device.” I love that line.

Liked 26 years in The North, 44 in The South. Multiple locations in each. Never once heard it referred to as a “straight” shift.

It must be limited. I’m 68, have lived in the DFW area my entire life, and have never heard standard transmissions referred to as straight.