Was it just last week that we all had Taco-mania? When the new 2024 Toyota Tacoma came out? Maybe two weeks ago? I think I was so flabbergasted by the wildly complicated, shock-absorber-enhanced seats that I forgot to talk to you about something else that caught my attention: the shifter. The manual shifter, the stick shift. It caught my attention because it was a perfect example of a strange phenomenon in the shifter zeitgeist right now: modesty. As in, like, the Puritanical sense. There seems to be a strange trend where, bafflingly, the actual stick of the stick shift has been deemed to be something that must be hidden at all costs, and, as a result, we get these strange, huge shift boots. Why? This looks weird? What the hell is going on?
Let’s have a look at this thing:
That’s a tall shifter. That makes sense, it’s a pickup truck, and the geometry of it all means you’ll need a tall shifter if you want to be able to comfortably shift the transmission without having to have a set of gibbon arms grafted on in place of your stubby human arms. Tall shifters have been a staple of trucks for decades and decades, and somehow, we never used to mind seeing the, you know, shifter. Look at this Land Cruiser shifter, for example:
Long shift lever, nice rubber accordion’d boot (which I actually prefer to these scrotal leather ones everyone uses now) and that shifter shaft is just out there, loud and proud, and looking fine. The Tacoma has one, too, under that leather tent there, of course, it’s just all hidden:
I’m not the only one to notice this; over at The Drive they found the shifter to be awkward and weird looking, so they asked a Toyota engineer, which was a smart idea. Here’s what they were told:
“We had to change, of course, the bell housing and so the mechanical attachment to where that goes to the transmission is a little bit longer. We have just a little bit longer throw, so, therefore, we had a little bit longer shift lever and the boot is just there to match that.”
Really, all that means is that it’s a long shift lever, which we all knew. But it doesn’t explain why the whole damn lever has to be covered with the boot!
Why do we need the boot to go all the way up to the “neck” of the shifter? It looks weirder like this! It looks like the Sorting Hat from the Harry Potter series, stuck there in between the seats, ready to tell you you’re a Slymeron or Ravenclams or whatever:
When I look at it, what I actually see is something strangely ecclesiastical, like the shifter is a medieval Jesuit monk or something like that:
Want to shift from third to fourth? Just grab Brother Theodore there by the head and drag him down. Easy!
When did this happen, exactly? Does this image make anyone feel uncomfortable, really?:
I’m just going to come out and say it: this total-boot/hide-the-stick business is not healthy. The strange, conical results of the shaft-modesty boots are bulky and clumsy things, and provide no real benefit to anyone. Let your shifter be a shifter. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Free the shaft! Free your mind! It’s called a stick shift, dammit, not a leathern-gown shift! Enough is enough! To the streets!
{Editor’s Note: I noticed this on the Jeep Wrangler JK, as well. Early JKs had shifters that looked great:
Then in 2011, the shifter turned into this:
Come on. Clearly that’s a step backwards! -DT]
These baggy boots annoy me so because they gather crumbs and dust from people’s pants so easily. Somebody hops in the car and brushes themselves off and suddenly my shifter boot is drowning in grass cuttings. With the materials they make them out of they’re a pain to clean, too, since they’re not flexible enough to go taut when I shop vac them.
That’s not a tall shift lever. THIS is a tall shift lever.
With no boot.
Jason Jason Jason, imagine a leather clad shift boot for a split window VW bus! One could make a pair of pants from one or two of those. We need a drawing/image/rendering of one! Now that is a long shifter.
If you make those long shifter boots out of legs of old pants, it could be recycling!
My first car was a 96 Geo Metro that I pulled the boot off the shifter so it was just a long shaft and put the shift knob from a Pole Position arcade cabinet on it.
The real question is, how does that boot handle Olive Garden Lasagna?
They aren’t even manuals. They are automatics and you dummies have been “shifting” for the last 5-10 years. ha!
I had a focus st and when I put a short throw in, I changed the boot as well to something a little less baggy. Be nice to go back to those retro examples.
Not sure why the shifter cant be mostly nude ask Desantos. But i bet that simple piece of fabric is cheaper than a manufactured boot.
“It’s not tiny. Don’t you know about shrinkage?”
George Costanza
The fit of the boot in the press photo seems poor. Sunken-in on the left, baggy on the right. Hopefully that’s something they’ll improve upon once it reaches production.
Well, I dunno. I enjoy hiding the stick on occasion.
I guess this is the outcome of auto journos complaining for years about hard plastic and otherwise cheap feeling interiors. Manufacturers don’t want to take any risks about getting blamed for looking too cheap.
So just make the shaft look halfway decent. It doesn’t have to be a piece of unpainted steel with visible weld lines. I suspect though that a large, faux-leather boot over a ugly-but-functional shaft is cheaper than a short boot with a nice-looking shaft, and that’s what’s really behind this.
I don’t understand this at all, I think Nissan did this first with the late ’90s early ’00s Frontier and Xterra, which was even more comical since it had like a 2 ft boot from the floor up to the shifter knob. I get it’s perceived as higher end, the same way rubber accordion boots have disappeared, but it’s NOT high end when it looks fucking stupid (duh). AND the kind of person who buys a truck with a manual probably wants it to feel like a god damn traditional truck. WTF is wrong with every car maker and their understanding of enthusiast buyers and the folks who like driving stick? I loved the rididulous turkey leg in my old ’73 blazer with it’s tiny boot and the floor and 3 feet of gleaming black metal, or even my XJ cherokee with it’s more modest but still mostly naked protrusion of black metal. Or why not have a “leather” boot around the base but still let the shifter protrude through, many ’60s + ’70s sports cars did this and it looks both elegant and technical. Sheesh went off on that a little
I think the manufacturers are just following what they get ordered. And probably 80% of that is rental and dealers who play or have played safe and cheap. So no color and no enthusiast options.
I fondly recall the tall, bent, naked shifters found on 1960s era Volvos.
For me, it’s Mopars. Dad was a 67-69 Barracuda man, and the manual shifter in those is… bizarre, but it works.
Tall, bent, naked…
Yeah, I guess our prudish culture would want to cover that up
If the shifter makes you feel uncomfortable, then you are sitting in your car wrong.
Toyota did this to meet the little-known CAPE (Conceal All Phallic Equipment) standards in Florida and Texas. Essentially, Toyota had only two options:
1.) Conceal the shaft for modesty.
2.) Leave the shaft exposed but install a shift knob shaped like a pistol.
It’s to protect the children.
It’s what Jesus would have wanted.
LMFAO!
Investigative jurnalism at its best.
Why did gated shifters never catch on past exotics? It’s always been the best answer if you ask me. Short of that, a minimal rubber boot at the base of the shifter, with a decent seal and just large/baggy enough to allow shifting. Baggy leather “Scrotums” serve no purpose and look bad.
It’s because gated shifters were always just a workaround for low precision gearboxes and linkages made worse by the long travel of a mid-engine layout. Apparently it was quite difficult to shift into the correct gear by feel, especially at speed, so they compensated by using the gate mechanism. The main downsides are that it’s really easy to drop crap into the gates, which can cause problems, and also doesn’t accommodate wear to the transmission and slight changes to lever position.
Sort of echoing other commenters, this is just another take on the giant pyramid semi-accordion rubber boots in the 90s and early 2000s. Those were fugly.
At least the Chrysler ones were more-or-less just ridiculously extendible rubber accordions kept in place with a bit of foam stuff wrapped around the gearshift. On both my Jeep and my Dodge pickup, I was able to shove the foam bit down to the bottom of the stick so that the boot basically collapsed on itself into a more inconspicuous traditional shape.
FFS, these are trucks with manuals, they’re supposed to have tall gearshifts sprouting from the floor…
Agreed that the bigger the leathery boot, the sloppier the shifter looks.
Why stop at a short boot though? You still have to clean layers of dust and gross stuff out of it all the time. Let’s just go back to gated shifters, the cleanest looking of all options
What do you think happens if you drop crap into the gates?
Grabbing brother Theo by the head, (or anyone else) is how the Catholic Church became a favorite target of weasel lawyers everywhere. Better to be agnostic.
I for one don’t buy leather products. Just one more thing they took from us: Rational rubber shifter boots.
Unless you pay extra on a Porsche, the shift boot is vinyl or some other pform of pleather.
I feel like Ron Whites ‘do you like porn’joke is relevant here.
Do you want a little, flaccid looking shaft sack and knob? Or do you want the big-boy thick, meaty shaft to grab and toss around?
“I did not know that about myself. o_o” Had me rolling!
Jason, back in the day, men’s shifters were much larger. I don’t know if it’s from increased plastics in our lives, but shifter sizes have gotten quite small. Out of shame, their short shafts are being hidden. Here’s an example of a big one from days gone: https://i0.wp.com/moderndriveline.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/5384106_4-1.jpg
They aren’t called “shifter boots” they are now known was “shifter cozy’s” 😉
This is the type of content you won’t get anywhere else, where Jason describes shift boost as ‘scrotal’. lmfao.
BRAVELY calling a shift BOOT scrotal is the kind of HARD hitting journalism we need in THESE TIMEZ!
“Just grab Brother Theodore there by the head and drag him down. Easy!
When did this happen, exactly? Does this image make anyone feel uncomfortable, really?”
Yes, yes it does.
I can’t even say “Brother Theodore” out loud without laughing now.