Garth George: An automatic response to the curse of traffic holdups

As a result of a most unusual circumstance I had to drive a manual car home from work one evening this week and back again the next morning.

Since I haven't driven such an old-fashioned vehicle (although it was only a year or so old) for so long that I can't remember the last time, I found the experience mildly disconcerting and strongly tedious. It was, though, rather like riding a bike - a bit wobbly for the first few yards then it all came back, the movements instinctive and smooth.

However, the journey home in peak-hours traffic required me to manipulate gear handle and clutch 108 times and on the way back in moderate mid-morning traffic 83 times. Which means that over a week, driving a manual car would require nearly 1000 such evolutions - and that's just getting to and from work.

My automatic car, on the other hand, requires only five touches on the gearshift to get to work and three to get home, the difference being that I stop to buy lunch at my favourite home bakery on the way to work each day.

The exercise made me wonder yet again why on earth anyone other than a sports or racing car driver would buy a manual vehicle when automatics are available at pretty much the same price.

I know there are some people, generally of advanced years, who "don't like" automatics for a variety of long-out-of-date reasons but apart from that the only motive I can see for anyone wanting a manual is that they absolutely have to be in control.

Not me. I'm happy to let the car's engine and transmission do all the work while I sit there in comfort and simply regulate the velocity and point it in the right direction.

There are a lot of people, I gather, for whom a car is a status symbol and perhaps having a clutch and gear handle is part of the status; or does fondling the gear handle perhaps have some erotic symbolism for both men and women alike?

Whatever, for me a car (or any other vehicle) is just a tool, an appliance which makes life easier. And I reckon that having a manual vehicle makes as much sense as hanging on to mum's old washing machine with its hand-operated wringer.

In spite of all that, I have to admit that I love cars, and have since I was a schoolboy with his nose pressed against the motor dealers' windows gazing longingly at the latest Ford Consul or Zephyr, Austin Cambridge, Morris Oxford, Hillman Minx, Humber Hawk or Standard Vanguard.

I've owned dozens of cars, from my first, a humble and well-used Ford Prefect, to a Ford Fairlane V8 to a Nissan Skyline to Honda Civics to today's near-new Falcon Futura, the purchase of which delivered me from 15 years of Japanese imports.

Not that there's much wrong with those. While my wife tootles about in the Falcon, my work car remains the elderly and reliable Nissan Cefiro I've had for more than 10 years and of which I am very fond.

It was born in 1989 and is equipped to a standard which would put some of today's new cars to shame, including wheel-mounted radio and cruise controls, electric mirrors and even variable brightness rear-viewing.

It's an ideal car with which to contend with the ever-increasing peak-hours traffic, particularly on the North-western Motorway, because it's worth only a few thousand dollars now and I don't really give a damn if some inattentive or slow-witted fellow contender dings it.

The Falcon, however, is a real motor car and what a joy it is to have all the instructions printed in English and a spare wheel that matches the other four; to have plenty of comfortable room inside for two (or five) bigger-than-average people; and with four litres of lazy power ticking away under the bonnet to know that there is plenty more in reserve, instantly and effortlessly available any time it's wanted.

Both cars are, of course, automatic, which brings me to a theory I have held for some time: that one of the main reasons for the long queues that build up at traffic lights in Auckland (and Tauranga, Wellington and Christchurch) these days is the number of manual vehicles still on the road.

They hold up traffic. By the time the driver of the front car in the queue has let off the handbrake, put in the clutch and engaged first gear, a minimum of three seconds has passed and that is enough time for at least three vehicles to have crossed the intersection.

My automatic, on the other hand, is in motion a split second after the lights change and often on those occasions I find myself at the head of the traffic light queue I'm halfway down the next block before the car behind me has moved.

So one way to improve our traffic flow would be to ban manual vehicles altogether, except for those people who are prepared to go to the trouble of making an application for special dispensation and paying a hefty licence fee to own one.

And all of them, except for racing drivers, should have to mount a large M sign on the windscreen and on the back window, the same size as the L sign displayed by learners, so we can treat them with the same disdain and discourtesy that we do learner drivers.

After a few years of that the problem would be solved and manual cars would be consigned to history, along with steam engines, sailing ships and open-cockpit aeroplanes.