DRIVER'S SIDE DIATRIBE
By Al Vinikour  

I know what you’re thinking; you’re reading the headline and wondering what I’ve been smoking to cause me to write something like that? Of course the gearshift lever is either on the steering column or on the floor (or in recent times, some are on the dashboard).

Truth-be-told, as I’m fond of saying, I tend to live in the past (because that’s where I was most happy) and there were lots of places to “hide” gearshifts. (Obviously this column will be geared [pardon the pun] towards automatic transmissions because even Crazy Guggenheim can figure out there’s only so many places you can put a shift lever for a manual transmission…and if you doubt my word I can think of another place you can look for it.)

When automatic transmissions were first installed in vehicles the shift lever was on the steering column. Some of the levers were so long they must have been recycled from ships the Vikings used to rape and pillage Europe (except for Scandinavia. As my former barber used to advise me, “Never go to the bathroom where you eat… you’re liable to eat what you went into the bathroom to “deposit”.) Eventually they became more stylized and chrome-laden and were fashionably-shortened. The next step was to put them on the floor, generally ensconced in the middle of a center console.

But even before that, however, other hiding places started emerging with the advent of pushbutton automatic transmissions. The first one I ever recall seeing was on my grandfather’s 1955 Packard Patrician. It had what looked like a steering column-placed stalk with a nose like W. C. Fields on the end. This box-shaped device housed the buttons for the various gears.

A year or three later Chrysler came out with their own pushbutton transmission and its family of models had several locations for installation. One was to run horizontally on the lower-portion of the dashboard; another was to run at a vertical slant closer to the instrument panel. They looked really slick and I’m sure that more than one transmission was ruined by inadvertent gear selection and/or kids fascinated with the buttons, as most kids are, and pushing them constantly until they either broke or gave up on life.

Edsel steering wheel shifter

Another novel place to hide gearshift buttons was in plain sight, right in front of the driver’s eyes. When the 1958 Edsel emerged to a crescendo of silence the gear buttons were in the middle of the steering wheel where one would normally find a horn button. Even the alleged safety-hating Chevrolet Corvair had its own unique placement for its gear selector; in a toggle switch below the IP.

Except for the aforementioned levers on the instrument panel it seems the automakers have run out of places to “class the place up.” However, they’ve reverted to other tactics that would tax the thought processes of the average Hoosier. For instance, Mercedes-Benz has a little stub of a gearshift lever on the aside the steering column and a button at the end of the stalk. To put the car in “Park” one has to simply push the button and the vehicle will automatically go to Park and collect $200. BUT...starting forward or backing out requires a learning process. (Why not…what doesn’t?)

First the brake pedal must be depressed. No Einstein-like intelligence there. But then the shift lever had to be depressed downward or upward (depending on your preferred direction) and often times, as puzzling as it seems, it takes several attempts before the right touch is applied and the vehicle is ready to rumble.

This process can be doubled if one backs out of a driveway and then has to work the lever to go forward. Oh, the stresses and complexities of a $100,000 vehicle! Think how much easier life was when all one had to master were the workings of a Chrysler K Car.

Chevy Corvair shifter

Then there's the new Jaguars where a round gear lever rises out of the center console when the ignition is pushed.

As of this writing that about covers all the places one would expect — or not expect to find a gearshift lever. But I have faith in the car manufacturers. As we speak there are secret, underground laboratories throughout the world where either esteemed designers or slave labor are working on even more clandestine locations that will make it difficult for the average driver to find.

Just like spinoffs from other technology, while working on gearshift levers this research will reap new benefits, like where to put ignition switches so nobody can find them. Why, hell, just look at the lowly turn signal stalk; it’s basically been living at the same location for decades but apparently is so well hidden that the majority of drivers can’t find them, thus giving vehicles behind them no idea that a turn is imminent.

Want to know what else I’m thinking? It’s this — I hate those people!”