My blender’s PR team could have saved the manual transmission
I was standing in my kitchen the other day, waiting for the wheel bearings I’d washed in the sink and tossed in my oven to dry off completely. My hands were too greasy to risk picking up my phone. So I began studying the control panel on my old thrift store blender. I’ll admit, I’d never taken a moment between Piña Coladas to read it. And boy had I missed out.
Some very enthusiastic member of Hamilton Beach’s in-house marketing team had named every darn speed the blender had. For those unfamiliar with this glorious machine, that’s two pulse gears and three continuous gears. All of which have both a high and low range!
That’s right, whoever decided to spiff up my blender had to come up with 10 separate verbs for its various speeds! For just $7 at Goodwill I can now blend. But I can also puree, grate, and aerate. Overwhelmed yet? I’ll break it down for you in a table. Because tables are awesome.
| # | Range | Type | Name |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lo | Pulse | Whip |
| 2 | Lo | Pulse | Aerate |
| 3 | Lo | Continuous | Puree |
| 4 | Lo | Continuous | Chop |
| 5 | Lo | Continuous | Crumb |
| 6 | Hi | Pulse | Grate |
| 7 | Hi | Pulse | Grind |
| 8 | Hi | Continuous | Beat |
| 9 | Hi | Continuous | Blend |
| 10 | Hi | Continuous | Liquify |
That’s a lot of power a single appliance gives me. Just think of the possibilities! Want ice chopped, but not ground? You can do that! Want an avocado liquified for some super healthy smoothie? Done! Want a lobster bisque properly aerated? No problem-o. Talk about $7 well spent!
Now compare that with my F-150. Also a boxy, utilitarian product of the 1980s. It originally cost a lot more than my trusty blender. And it only has five speeds–which I completely understand. But only one of those speeds even has a name. That’s “Overdrive.” And while catchy, it’s just a mechanical description of a gear ratio greater than 1:1.
Considering Ford employs thousands more people than Hamilton Beach, they could have stepped up their game.
Save the manuals!
Automotive journalists and other enthusiasts have long been wringing their hands about the imminent death of the manual transmission. And it’s true that the once ubiquitous three-pedal option plummeted to less than 1% of new cars by 2021. But perhaps we’re going about selling “row your own” cars the wrong way.
We’re making up “Save the manual” bumper stickers and telling everyone how much better the “cog swapper” GR Corolla is than the automatic. What if, instead, automakers just named all the gears in their manual transmissions? With the right catchy names, painting vivid pictures of all the fun you could be having, who could resist a stick shift?
Think I’m crazy? Die-hard enthusiasts know every one of their manual transmission’s gears has its own personality. The other day I was hanging with some sports car friends and an Alfa driver said, “What’s your favorite gear?” A Mercedes guy thought about it for a minute, then said, “Third.” Others nodded knowingly.
A caveat here. Third gear in my pickup truck is very different than third gear in my roadster. With that in mind, may I suggest two families of manual transmission gear names?
Sports car manual transmission gears
| Gear | Type | Name |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Standard | Launch |
| 2 | Standard | Sprint |
| 3 | Standard | Carve |
| 4 | Standard | Cruise |
| 5 | Overdrive | Highway pull |
| 6 | Overdrive | Save gas |
4WD truck/SUV manual transmission gears
| Gear | Range | Name |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lo | Creep |
| 2 | Lo | Crawl |
| 3 | Lo | Bounce along |
| 4 | Lo | Get a run on it! |
| 1 | Hi | Lazy start |
| 2 | Hi | Dirt road rumble |
| 3 | Hi | Two lane cruise |
| 4 | Hi | Highway wobble |
