Royu Driveway Changed How I Feel

Ever since I joined the Sunday morning gathering at Royu Driveway the other day, something has shifted in me. I’m the woman who had absolutely no interest in cars until a few years ago… and who chose an automatic-only license without a second thought when I went to driving school 19 years ago. I never imagined I’d feel this way—and I’m the most surprised of all.

It really goes to show: you never know what life has in store.

So, without keeping you in suspense, here’s what I mean:

“I’ve decided to buy a manual car of my own.”

…Wait,

Whaaat?! (ﾟдﾟ)!!!!????

I can imagine people saying, “Mina, have you hit your head or something?” But I’m completely serious. That’s exactly what I’m thinking right now.

What Being Able to Drive a Manual Opens Up

As I briefly mentioned in my post about Royu the other day, one of the owners kindly offered, “Would you like to drive my 718 Boxster GTS with a manual transmission?” But after my husband took it for a drive, he put a stop to the idea.

“Mina, you can’t handle it. You’ll wreck the clutch. Don’t do it.”

At the time, I accepted that he was right: it was someone else’s precious Porsche, and I wasn’t confident driving a manual. But five minutes passed, then ten, and I started to feel more and more frustrated. Meanwhile, I watched people who’d arrived in manual Porsches drive off with effortless confidence. Instead of fading, my frustration just kept growing.

If I’d been able to drive a manual without a problem, I could have taken the 718 Boxster GTS for a spin that day. A 718 Boxster GTS is a rare car—you’re not likely to get the chance to test-drive one just by asking at a dealership.

Years ago, an English conversation school had a slogan along the lines of, “Speak English and you can talk to a billion people.” Learning to drive a manual feels much the same.

If you can drive a manual, you can drive cars all over the world (well, maybe not huge vehicles like trucks).

It would open up a whole new world. And yet, how many opportunities am I missing out on? Or maybe this is just my competitive streak kicking in, haha.

A Woman Who Can Confidently Drive a Manual Porsche

Lately, I’ve found myself thinking:

“I want to be a cool woman who can confidently drive a manual Porsche.”

There aren’t many women who can drive a manual. So imagine gliding up Royu Driveway in a manual Porsche, or cruising through town behind the wheel of one (even if nobody around you can tell it’s a manual). That would be incredibly cool.

I think I feel this way because I’m a bit of a contrarian—I’ve always liked doing things differently from everyone else.

On an elementary school trip to Itsukushima Shrine on Miyajima Island in Hiroshima Prefecture, everyone was buying the island’s famous souvenir: a rice paddle. Since it seemed like absolutely everyone was buying one, I deliberately chose a pasta server instead. (Like this one↓)

*Image source: Amazon, “PRO SERIES Wooden Spaghetti Server, Standard”

When I got home and gave it to my mother, she said:

“Come on, the souvenir to get on Miyajima is a rice paddle! And we hardly ever eat spaghetti at home!”

I still remember how emphatically she called me out. I have to admit, I’m a bit of an oddball (-_-).

Anyway, the point is that I like doing things differently. Since so few women drive manuals, that’s exactly why I want to become one who can.

My Own Manual Porsche

I can hear people saying, “If you want to learn to drive a manual so badly, stop making excuses and get more practice!” But our Boxster GTS is a two-seater.

That means if I want my husband beside me while I practice (I’m still nervous about going alone), we’d need to make arrangements for someone to watch the kids—like asking my mother-in-law to look after them when we went to Royu Driveway the other day.

With that in mind, it would be difficult to practice regularly unless we had a manual car with at least four seats, so the kids could come along too.

On top of that, our Boxster is my husband’s cherished first Porsche—the car that fulfilled a dream he’d had since childhood. If I were to scratch it, bump it, or somehow teach the clutch a bad habit… I just can’t bring myself to practice in it casually.

And so time went by without me getting any practice in (yes, I know—that’s just an excuse, haha).

My husband says,

“When the GT3 Touring with a manual (MT) arrives, stick a learner-driver sign on it and practice, haha. Nobody will come anywhere near you!”

But even I think that might be pushing it, haha. And it’s a two-seater—and a GT3, no less… I’d be even more nervous about driving it than the Boxster and would probably avoid it altogether.

As I mulled it all over and relived the frustration I’d felt at Royu Driveway, an idea came to mind:

Why not just buy a manual Porsche of my own?

Easy to say, “I’ll just buy one!”—but the truth is, I don’t have that kind of money, haha. Still, if it were my own Porsche, I wouldn’t have to worry about it being someone else’s car, and I could drive it as often as I liked.

So I started browsing used-car listings, but manual Porsches really are expensive (of course they are, haha). Even the ones that looked like bargains tended to have very high mileage or be older models. As my husband pointed out, “You might get one cheap, but you’ll spend a fortune on maintenance.”

Maybe buying a manual Porsche right away is just too much for me at this point (-_-).

If all I wanted was to drive a manual, I could buy an inexpensive Japanese car. But in the past, I’ve found that I could drive the Toyota Comfort at driving school just fine, but couldn’t manage the Boxster at all. And when my brother let me drive his manual Subaru Legacy, he said, “You’re getting the hang of it!”—but when I got home and drove the Boxster, I was hopeless again.

So ideally, I’d like a manual car that feels as much like a Porsche as possible.

Which brings me to the Volkswagen Golf…

With that in mind, I started looking online at the Golf and other promising manual cars. When I asked my husband for advice, he said:

“A manual Golf GTI could be a good choice, if you can find a nice one that hasn’t been modified. Or a rear-wheel-drive BMW 3 Series with a manual would be good for learning the fundamentals. Actually, I’d quite like one myself, haha.”

Maybe one of those would be the way to go. To be honest, though, I am a woman, after all, and part of me would rather spend the money on getting rid of facial sunspots and brightening my skin than buying a car.

But if I keep thinking like that, I’ll never become “a cool woman who can confidently drive a manual Porsche”!ヽ(`Д´)ﾉ

So, while I’ll keep my goal of buying a Targa of my own someday (though the current Targa isn’t available with a manual transmission in Japan…), I’m starting to seriously consider whether I could find a promising used manual car with at least four seats (so the kids can ride along too) before the end of this year.