Both my kids (19 year old Daughter and 17 year old son) drive manual transmission Ford Fusions. One is a 2007 and one is a 2009. My wife and I both had manuals for our first cars and have owned several since. It was a must that my kids learn to drive a manual. When my daughter started out, she hated it but now she hates driving my wife's car because its an automatic. They are two of very few kids in their classes with the dying skill of being able to drive a manual.

My two relatives that are dealership mechanics know their stuff. The dealership makes more money on standard service than major work. 5 brake jobs make more than one engine rebuild. Which they have rebuilt engines under warranty when they couldn't get short blocks, let alone long blocks.

My friend told me dealer mechanics are the worst when he was getting his hours in school. Luckily he had a good teacher at college to show him the right way and then on the job learning the fast lazy idgaf way. Breaks are the worst in my opinion, find me a dealer that turns and greases the pistons or cleans the clips properly, or replaced them before slapping them back together. It's better for them not to so the next service you may need new calipers.

From what I've seen, our society is not very well educated. The masses are poorly educated. When I look at how my grandparent's and great grandparent's age were educated, those of us in the last 80 years are poorly educated. Some fields have people who are skilled in technically , but generally education is not preparing people to think, analyze, and work creatively.

Even the schooling now a days seems to be geared towards computer skill and reading codes. I was out with my buddy last weekend who is a farrier and we were having a hard time thinking of trades outside of shoeing left that are what they were 50 years ago as far as going through a program and coming out the other side with the knowledge base to tackle every aspect of the job.

Because Detroit went to hell in a hand basket 🧺