Four-on-the-floor: Once cool, now antique

Back in the day, a car with four-on-the-floor was the preferred cool of every young man cruising the main drag.

The manual transmission parked at the right of the driver was a fun way to take your Mustang GT out on a winding road.

But, the constant clutch and shift is no good for heavy traffic. Maybe that is one of the reasons why the clutch and stick have largely disappeared from the urban landscape.

Only diehard enthusiasts go for the old gearbox. In 2016, only 27 percent of new models in the U.S. were offered with both automatic and manual transmissions which is down from 37 percent in 2011 and 47 percent in 2006. Among actual purchases, less than three percent of sales in 2016 went for manual gearboxes which is in stark contrast to the 80 percent sold in some Asian and European countries today.

At one time, the manual transmission lowered the price of the car, was more durable, and even improved fuel economy. Advancements in technology have changed that. Car manufacturers have improved automatic transmissions, and the best now outperform their manual counterparts in all of the areas that once made them great, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Electric cars, devoid of a transmission altogether, are also entering the mainstream and could ultimately replace all gasoline cars and make the question of clutches entirely obsolete. Even sports cars, once dominated by the stick shift that driving enthusiasts traditionally love to use, are being forced to change their roots due to slack in orders. Ferrari, as an example, decided to end all manual transmissions in their production cars because the demand fell close to zero.