Re: Learning stick on SC?
Is a SuperCoupe a good car to learn stick shifting?
It is a FANTASTIC care to learn to shift on! Why?
Well, the strong low rpm torque and wide gear spread, combined with a modest clutch pressure and a really only slightly notchy floor shift make it easy to start away, reletively RPM insensitive, easy to clutch and easy to tell what gears you are in.
I learned to drive on a non-syncro Massey Fergusson 4 speed crash box that didn't even have the gears in the familiar "H" pattern. Once you were rolling double clutching was the order of the day and always involved a little grinding.
Only slightly better was the "mystery shifter" in the pickups and the cars of the time. "3 on the tree" was a wobbly post sticking out of the right side of the steering column. It always had 4 positions and about 4" of slop in every direction. In the worst of them, the linkage rods got wore and they would tend to lock in 2 gears, solidly binding up unless you climbed underneath to wiggle one of the rods free. This of course always happened in the rain. I suppose this is one of the reasons lowered cars were not popular back then...
The old 1950's Jeeps they still had in the Army had a pretty good shifter and a heavy but not bad clutch. 2nd and 3rd were syncronized, but 1st wasn't. That combined with an absolutely gutless engine made hillclimbing very difficult. If you couldn't make it in 2nd, you generally had to roll back down the hill and try it redlined in 1st. Some of us used our Massey Fergusson experience to double clutch it in with a hateful KRUNCH.
The Ford Toploader was the transmission of legend back then. I had several cars with it. While it was legendary strong, it was never a legendary good shifter. Downshifting was always balky once the syncros polished up. The shifters loosend up with time and abuse, and new bushings were a constant spring ritual. A friend taught me to drag race shift thus:
"Brace your right foot hard down on the gas and don't let off it unless you win or the engine blows. When the engine nears redline, put all the force you can on the shifter. It'll stay locked in gear until you hammer the clutch as quick as you can. If you have a good pull on the shifter, you'll be in the next gear and spinning."
The Japanese cars really spoiled us for what a manual transmission should shift like. Back around 1980 there were darned few American V8s with 5speeds, so I planned on rectifying that. I put a Toyota Celica 5speed behind a hopped up 289 in my 1978 Merc Zepher Z7. While it shifted nice, that cammed up, flywheel lightened engine was a nightmare to get started away. The engine barely idled at 1000-1200 rpm and made no power to speak of below 3500 rpm, at which point it was like someone hit a light switch and it would open in a tire shredding roar. Even with 3.50 gears and a 3.25 first it would barely start away without stalling. As it got rolling, with little warning it would explode in rpm like it had just hit a patch of ice. Fun when you wanted to, but tedious to live with constantly.
My kids learned to drive on an old Suzuki 4x4 we beat on the back lot. With that experience my daughter had no problem making the jump to the SVO 5 speed. With the boggy bottom end of a low compression turbo 4, it takes concentration to get started away. Even more to get started away fast into traffic or on a hill. With the strong low rpm torque the SC will be a breeze to learn on.