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How To Drive a Manual Transmission Car

Slowing Down and Downshifting in a Stick Shift Car

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Jumi Kim
Co-founder, President, CEO, Capital Dream Cars
www.capitaldreamcars.com  
703-785-9357

Jumi is a founding member, president and CEO of Capital Dream Cars— Washington, DC’s premier exotic car rental company as featured in The Washington Post, Goss’ Garage, and SpeedTV.com. The business was inspired by a hobby and a need. Apart from owning her own exotic cars, Jumi would travel to Formula One races with friends and family—to Montreal twice for the Canadian Grand Prix and to Indianapolis for the United States Grand Prix—but when she looked to rent a Ferrari locally, her search came up dry. So, after much pioneering determination, she and two business partners launched Capital Dream Cars in March 2006 to fulfill the “dream car” dreams of Capital Area car enthusiasts like them. Growing up, Jumi always enjoyed driving, but it wasn’t until she learned to drive stick about 15 years ago and bought her first stick vehicle—a little green Acura Integra GS-R that still takes up a spot in her garage (and still runs great at nearly 200k miles!)—that she understood driving on a whole different level, not just as a way of getting from here to there. And perhaps it was her own small way of rebelling against the gender stereotype that girls can’t drive, let alone drive stick. Although she doesn’t presume to be a great technical driver, she enjoys driving fun cars and sharing her enthusiasm with others, which is, after all, what car enthusiasm is all about.

Slowing Down and Downshifting in a Stick Shift Car

This video will show how to slow down and down shift in a manual transmission car.

This series: 727,323 views

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Car

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Driving

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Drive

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Stick

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Manual

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Transmission

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Auto

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Automobile

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Shift

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Gear

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Gears

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Clutch

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Automatic

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Stick shift

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Driving manual transmission

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Transcripts

Jumi Kim: Hi, I am Jumi of Capital Dream Cars. I have been showing you how to drive a manual transmission car. Now, I am going to show you how to slow down and downshift. Downshifting is when you shift into a lower gear not a higher gear. It's actually unnecessary most of the time, because it causes extra stress on your engine and drive line. Instead, when slowing down, press on your clutch, pop your gear box into neutral, take your foot off the clutch and then close to a stop with your brake pedal. Coasting to stop in neutral adds more wear to your brake but it's a lot easier and less expensive to replace brake pads than it is to replace an engine or a transmission. Some situations when it's actually useful to downshift include:When coming to stop on slick roads, when the extra control of downshifting helps with traction.

Descending a steep road with the heavy large load when you shouldn't rely fully on your brakes.

Descending a windy road when you may need to take quick evasive action.

Now, that I have discussed slowing down and downshifting let's move on to how to handle turning corners, rolling stops and stop and go driving in our manual transmission car.

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