New Jersey man turned $0.01 into a Ford but faces a big issue when he learns it's a manual

This YouTuber from New Jersey turned $0.01 into a car, namely an old Ford Focus, but now he has a problem.

The problem is he can’t drive it because it’s a manual.

Americans are famously not particularly good at this sort of thing, but that’s purely because of the fact the US has always been an automatic-centric market.

And now the rest of world is following suit.

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This YouTuber ended up learning how to drive his manual Ford just so he could film the video

New Jersey YouTuber JD Montclair did one of those ‘trading up’ challenges where you turn a near-worthless item into something of value by trading up multiple times.

And each time acquiring something that’s a bit more valuable than the thing you traded.

It worked, clearly, because he somehow turned $0.01 into a drivable car.

It’s just an old Ford Focus, but it’s a car, and it works.

But, unfortunately for him, this Ford Focus is a stick shift, which he says he can’t drive.

Fair play to him, he didn’t take long to learn because he did drive the car to his home in New Jersey in the end.

Are manuals going the way of the dinosaurs?

People might be anecdotally familiar with the fact that American drivers prefer automatic vehicles, but available statistics paint a picture that’s even more one-sided than we thought.

Today, 97 percent of Americans drive automatics, according to CarMax, and that number is going up.

The percentage of manual cars in the US is so small it’s almost negligible.

And most manual cars available are usually niche supercars or sportscars.

For decades, there was a stark contrast between nearly automatic-only North America and manual-friendly Europe, but that’s changing, mainly because the technology is changing.

With exceptions, such as the Nilu27 or even the Porsche Carrera T, most performance cars are now automatic.

Supercar manufacturers prefer automatics for various technical reasons, chief among which is the fact that an automatic dual-clutch gearbox is simply much faster than a manual transmission.

The rise of EVs helps as well, because electric cars have no transmission at all.

Some automakers are now adding gears to electric vehicles, but those are digitally reproduced ‘fake’ transmissions designed to improve the driving experience, but calling them a ‘manual’ would be a stretch.

BMW execs believe the manual gearbox will sooner or later go extinct.

We’ll find whether they’re right probably sooner than we think.