Want to learn to drive a stick shift? This guy will teach you on his car

MINNEAPOLIS -- I spent part of Halloween hanging out in a cemetery.

I wasn’t there to commune with the dead. Instead, I was getting reacquainted with the dying art of driving a stick shift car.

In Roselawn Cemetery in Roseville, Minnesota, I met a stranger who agreed to let me drive around the quiet tombstone-lined roads in his personal vehicle: a 2014 Subaru WRX, an all-wheel drive sports car with a turbo charger and a five-speed manual transmission.

This unusual arrangement was thanks to a company called the Stick Shift Driving Academy. The online service pairs people who want to learn how to drive a stick shift with people who have a car with a manual transmission and are willing to teach a stranger to drive it for a split of the fee.

Entrepreneur Giuseppe Frustaci said the company he started in 2017 offers lessons in all of the top 100 metro areas in the U.S. About 400 freelance instructors across the country have signed up to make their personal cars available for lessons, he said, and about 20,000 people have taken them.

A generation or two ago, you wouldn’t need to recruit gig workers to teach people how to work a clutch pedal.

The standard way to learn how to drive a standard transmission used to be getting your parent, an older sibling, a spouse or a friend to teach you.

But in the United States, driving a standard transmission has become an unstandard practice as cars increasingly automate the driving experience and electric vehicles forgo the need to have a series of gears.

In 2023, data analytics company J.D. Power estimated less than 2% of new vehicles had manual transmission and about 90% of all vehicles on the road had automatic transmission.

Back in 2016, U.S. News & World Report estimated that the number of American drivers who could drive a stick shift was as little as 18%.

‘Could you teach my spouse?’

Frustaci said he sought to learn how to drive a manual transmission after he went on a trip to Europe where manual transmission cars are much more common. He learned he would have to pay more to rent a car with an automatic transmission.

Back home in Boston, he tried to find someone to teach him to drive a stick shift, but he couldn’t find someone who had a car they were willing to let a learner try out.

”Most people have automatics,” he said. “And of the people who have a stick shift car, a lot of times they’re driving a car that they don’t really want a beginner learning on.”

Frustaci, who had a background in marketing for startups, realized if he was having such a hard time, maybe others were too.

He advertised on Craigslist seeking people with stick shift cars willing to be teachers. Soon the phone started ringing.

“I went, ‘Hey, this could actually be a business,’” he said.

Frustaci said he has four categories of customers:

--People who want to work as valets or car mechanics or in auto sales who will occasionally need to move a stick shift car.

--People who want to drive in another part of a world where manual transmission cars are far more common.

--People who want to get a car — a vintage sports car or a old-school Jeep — that typically features a manual transmission.

--People who live in a household where someone else has a stick shift car that they don’t know how to drive.

“We get a lot of married couples calling, saying, ‘Hey could you teach my spouse, because if I try to teach them, we’re probably going to end up getting divorced,’” Frustaci said.

“It was just a skill I wanted to pick up,” said Michael Yocum, a 25-year-old Minneapolis resident. Being unable to drive a manual transmission, “I always felt my skill set was lacking.”

After taking a lesson earlier this year, he decided he needed to drive a stick shift all the time. So he bought a 1992 Mazda Miata roadster.

“It makes driving way more enjoyable,” he said. “Everyone thinks it’s super cool.”

Frustaci said driving a stick shift is similar to listening to vinyl records, an “anachronistic hobby” that some younger people are drawn to because it’s cool.

Lessons with the Stick Shift Driving Academy last two, three or four hours, depending on which package you buy. The cost ranges from $250 to $300, and the instructors get about half of that.

The instructors do it because it’s a way to make a little extra money with their manual transmission car.

But typically, instructors also really like driving a stick shift and want to share that driving experience with others.

“This is probably one of my most fun gigs,” said Anjhain Black, a 34-year-old St. Paul resident who estimates she’s taught about 40 people over the past three years as an instructor with the Stick Shift Driving Academy.

Her car is a 2016 Subaru Forester with six forward gears that she calls Susie the Subie.

“It makes me feel like a race car driver. That’s why I like it,” she said.

She said most of her students are men. They sometimes do a double take when they learn their instructor is a 5-foot-3 Navy veteran.

“They want to be cool. They want to do it for a job. Or they want a new life skill,” she said of her students. “There may be an apocalypse and you might need to steal a car someday and it’s a stick.”

“I’m the kind of person who makes driving a manual too much of my personality,” said Rob Riehm, a 44-year-old St. Paul resident and stick shift driving instructor.

Riehm estimates he’s owned about 15 vehicles, and all but one had a manual transmission.

His latest is the Subaru WRX that I took a lesson on.

Driving a stick shift is more work, requiring both hands and feet to work together when you’re changing gears.

But stick shift fans say it’s a more engaging way to drive.

“You’re using your ears and the seat of your pants,” said Riley Rosell, a 28-year-old Lake Elmo resident who bought a stick shift Mitsubishi Eclipse after taking a lesson with the Stick Shift Driving Academy.

Riehm taught me in a cemetery because the Stick Shift Driving Academy asks instructors to do their teaching in paved offroad locations like a community college campus or a fairgrounds.

Instructors also have to get a vehicle safety inspection and driving record check.

Riehm started the lesson by explaining how a clutch works (“Imagine two pieces of sandpaper...”).

The curriculum suggested by the Stick Shift Driving Academy includes topics like hill starts, how to recover from stalls and avoiding bad habits like riding the clutch.

In truth, I’ve had prior experience with a stick shift. I’ve owned a Mazda Miata and drove a manual transmission Honda Accord on the hills of San Francisco.

A friend and I once buzzed across France and into Germany in a tiny rental Renault with a standard transmission ala Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn in “Two for the Road.”

That was many years ago, but when I drove Riehm’s Subaru, the muscle memory came back.

I didn’t stall once. You might call it a clutch performance.