Stick shift less Likely to get stolen? My Story

stick less likely to get stolen
stick can be coasted or bump started if the battery is low
stick doesn't have transmission cooler lines and radiators springing leaks
stick can be shifted with left hand, elbow or partner in the passenger seat
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OK, before we get started, indeed, stick shift cars are less likely to get stolen. Some articles online contradict such idea but others support it. At the end of the day it makes sense that if most people are used to automatics then manuals may present a problem for most criminals as well, therefore finding automatics easier to steal for whatever intended purpose.
And here’s the story. Keep in mind this was many years ago, let’s say early 90s. I was a little kid yet old enough to remember and old enough to understand what it meant when my mother came back home one day saying her car had been stolen while visiting my grandmother. This was in Argentina, where 99.99% of cars are manual. The thing is, my mother had learned to drive a few years earlier while living in Boston where of course cars are mostly automatic. When we moved from USA back to Argentina my father had to look all over the city until he found one of the few automatic cars for sale, a Ford Taunus.
That same day we received a phone call from a police department nearby: The car had been found. We all left in my father’s car and sure enough my mother’s Taunus was there. Whoever stole the car only drove a short distance… before busting the automatic transmission by trying to use it as a manual. Yes, the thief probably never used an automatic car in his life and managed to break the transmission.
So long story short the cops found our Taunus in the middle of the street with a busted transmission. The cherry on top? We then realized that after having the car removed from the street the cops had stolen our new tyres and replaced them with fully worn ones, probably from one of the cops in the station that needed a new set for his own vehicle.
True story folks.
FerFAL
Fernando “FerFAL” Aguirre is the author of “The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse” and “Bugging Out and Relocating: When Staying is not an Option”.