Good for you to learn how to drive a manual transmission...
Owning an L78 and using it as a DD was very cool. Back then it was common for a muscle car to be the only form of transportation.
My Dad was not only cheap, but didn't trust automatic transmissions to last very long. I was 34 by the time he bought his first automatic. In 1968, I passed my driver test in a 1966 Malibu with 283, 3 on the tree and manual steering and brakes. To this day, I prefer rowing the gears in a muscle car. In fact, I spent 30 years of my life rowing 13 speed Road Rangers in several semis I owned...
