Last month I went on a cruise with my girlfriend’s family when, during a bus tour through Mazatlán I spotted it: The Moby Dick of shifters. An absolutely gargantuan, 2-3 foot mammoth of a stickshift with a boot that looked like a golf bag. Rather than pay any attention to the gorgeous city I was riding through, I found myself mesmerized by the bus driver carefully maneuvering that shifter via the longest shift-throws I’ve ever seen. Here, have a watch.
I was worried that being stranded for the majority of a week on a cruise ship would mean I’d have to live a car-free life, but the reality turned out to be quite different. For one, there was a Volkswagen Thing on the ship itself!:
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Then, during the land excursions, I spotted gems like this custom Nissan Versa convertible:
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And then I learned about those VW Beetle-based “Pulmonias” with their custom fiberglass bodies and taillights nabbed from pretty much any car you can think of:
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But the real gold came when my girlfriend, her family, and I jumped on a bus in Mazatlán; it wasn’t what I saw from the bus, it was the bus itself. Behold this absolutely gargantuan shifter, which I’m going to call the longest shifter in the world even though you and I both know that some absurd contraption probably exists with a 5-foot shifter:
To give you an idea of the scale, check out this side photo showing the driver. The shift-boot looks like a damn golf bag!
Watching the driver seemingly dislocate his shoulder to toss that shifter what looked like a quarter mile towards the front of the bus to change gears, only to then walk three miles, grab the shifter, and pull it all the WAAAAY back for the next shift is truly mesmerizing. Check it out for yourself:
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I wish I could tell you more about the bus we were in, or the engine (which clearly sounded like a diesel), or even the transmission model, but I really have no clue what this machine is:
The tour guide let me sit up front, where I filmed the driver (with his permission), and just generally lost my shit, not at all paying attention to the lovely surroundings:
What is Mazatlán like? Is it clean? What do the people there do for a living? How’s the weather?
To all of these questions I have no answers. But what I can tell you is that the shifter in our tour bus was something special, and the operator is basically an olympian, with his ability to row that humongous oar in just the right way to get every dang shift on the money. He’s a hero, really.
That’s what she said…
Damn, DT, you’re a cruiser now? You truly have embraced the SoCal lifestyle. Good for you! Years ago visiting Mexico I sat through a timeshare pitch just to get the free rental car for a day. The car I wound up getting for free for a day? A VW thing, of course! Hey, it ran and drove me up the coast to some cool beaches, and that’s all I cared about.
DT Cruiser.
It’s not the length of the shifter that matters, it’s how you use it?
I love this article. I thought you were joking about the golf bag, but that really is what it looks like! My favorite part, though, is imagining what was going through the driver’s mind as some giddy tourist became obsessed with his shifter!
Be honest, David. Did you participate in the group dance along when Macarena started playing on the bus?”
Twin Shift has entered the discussion . . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI6hBhxKJwU
The shifter King
I couldn’t help but notice the driver is sitting in a wicker lawn chair!! And, no sign of any seat belts! You just have to love Mexico. In a lot of ways, it’s a freer country than the USA.
Depending on how you define lever length, I have a feeling that ones in Renaults from the 60’s and 70’s could be longer. A right-angle stubby lever comes out of the upper dashboard, but then there is a lever going all the way to the front of the engine where the transmission is. In the end of that lever is a racetrack shaped hole and it fits around the *actual* gear shift lever that is sticking vertically out of the transmission. All you’re doing from the inside is using a lever to move another lever – so simple!
That Versa and the fiberglass Beetle-based contraption seem less like cabriolets and more like modern(-ish, in the case of the Beetle) versions of the jolly beach cars of the ’60, with surrey tops and custom but barebones interiors that are now worth an astounding amount of money. The original and most of the follow-ups were based on small Fiats, but I’ve seen pictures of some based on a Citröen 2CV or other similar cars, and as a child I had a Majorette car that was probably a 2CV or Dyane that had the full roof bars around the doors and a perky round umbrella top raised over the sunroof opening.
this reminds me: having gone half a century without seeing one in person, over the independence day weekend, in the affluent neighborhood next to my not-so-much, i saw a jolly and two mokes toting families on different days.
Someone over there also has a black and maroon 2CV (maybe a “charleston”?)
Drove a early 80’s school bus once with a manual once. You had to slide over on the seat a bit and reach real far for fifth.
I was going to say, the few times I’ve ridden in stock shift school buses, the shifter was quite similar.
That’s probably about the same length as most of the trucks I’ve driven, and similar throw too. They’re pretty fun to drive, and the shifter throw is not actually cumbersome.
Folks we are living in peak David Tracy.
David, these are ‘nuthin- Dig around old cabover big trucks and you’ll find shifters even longer. Some of them actually mounted the shifter on the transmission and had a 5 foot or so long lever to get the gearshift up to the driver who was sitting right next to the engine!
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While your digging through the abandoned big rigs, check out the short conventional cab’s shifters- These were a freak of trucking with a cab a bit less than 8 feet long back when many states only allowed a 45 foot trailer and a 55 foot overall length. So we’ve got maybe 3 feet of hood and at most 4 and a half feet of cab. The 6 cylinder diesel and it’s radiator fill the center front 5 to 6 feet of the cab and the clutch and transmission add another couple feet… So we’ve got the gearshift lever sprouting through the floor at the back of the cab so it has to go 3 or 4 feet forward and at least a couple feet up. Even more if it Mack U model with the cab offset to the left…
Is that a cut down leather belt I see holding up the boot?
Bonus points for the leather fringe at the top of the boot (to boot!).
I’ve heard Mazatlán bus drivers can be pretty shifty.
That bus driver is styling! The soul patch and shades make it look like he’s on loan from Los Lobos.
My first thought – damn, Cesar Rosas drives a bus as a side gig!
(And then I realized I’ve been listening to Los Lobos for more than 40 years & this would be Cesar Jr, if not III.)
It’s not the length of the stick, but how well it fits into the gear.
It’s not the size of the oar, it’s how you row the boat.
(Are we on a cruise yet?)
Not Elise is way more patient than most people … but then, she knew about your affliction when she met you.
Elise is a saint. I have 11 cars, and I ask her “Should I buy this 1954 Willys?”
Her: “Ohmygosh that looks so fun!”
Me: Nuff said.
Folie à deux, indeed.
She’s a keeper!
So you both came from the same planet of Rustopia? Congrats on finding each other (I mean that seriously)!
My wife did the same thing with me over a guitar recently. I showed her the picture and she said “That’s so cool! You should get it!”
And I did. Then I gave her a big kiss.
Hold on to her David.
If Elise hasn’t already ordered a strait jacket for you, then she is a keeper.
Standard or metric sized?
Ed Big Daddy Roth approved
Let’s just give some props to the driver. He has the longest shifter you have ever seen. He knows it.
Does he wave it in front of everyone who steps on that bus?
Does he talk about it constantly?
Does he text pictures of it to all his friends?
Does he constantly side-glance at it with a glint in his eye?
Does he abuse it to make a quick buck?
Nope. He just reaches down and lets it do all the speaking by itself while maintaining a calm demeanor. We can all learn from this man.
Elise’s family’s first impressions? Elise, do you know what this guy’s true past is all about? Yeah, he’s a little wacked, but everyone loves him.
I assume he would be mentioned the way Earth is in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Mostly Harmless.
I can’t tell you their first impression of me, but I can tell you that I think they’re all wonderful.
If you think she’s the one, don’t hesitate! I made that decision in 1984 and it was the best thing in my entire life.
Guys with first names for last names are usually correct, so I’d take James Thomas’s advice, and by the same principle, you should be able to trust your own judgement.
Props to “Elise” for her patience and skill filming your nerdy car freak-outs.
I thought the same during the VW Thing post. She had enough patience to film it and did a great job too.
You vs the guy she tells you not to worry about haha
“Stop staring at that guys shifter or I’m going home!”
“I bet he doesn’t even know how to shift. He just throws the shifter around and hopes it catches the next gear. You know my 10-speed always hits the right gear every time.”