A Backcountry Ode to the Manual Transmission

Like buffalo, manual transmissions once roamed in great numbers across this beautiful land. Preferred for their simplicity and ruggedness, they were found in everything from one-ton work trucks to Jeeps to sports cars. With less heat generation and complexity to deal with, manual transmissions were often the choice of off-road adventurers exploring the wilds of Moab, the Colorado high passes, and the Sierras in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. As a bonus, their lower first gears made them better for technical trails, and they were usually cheaper, too.

Three-pedalers are sadly now a dying breed. Currently, only 36 vehicles are available in the United States with a manual transmission. Of those 36, the vast majority are sports cars, and only four really matter: the Ford Bronco, Toyota Tacoma, Jeep Gladiator and Wrangler. Every year, that list gets shorter as more people forget the joy of manually rowing through gears and the feel of a clutch pedal under their left foot. Still, a select group of individualists buck that trend and prefer manual transmissions over automatic slush boxes.

Centerforce Clutches is intimately familiar with the joys of using a manual transmission. Since 1982, it has manufactured high-performance clutches for a wide variety of applications. An innovator in using centrifugal force and weights, its first clutch was patented as the Centerforce Weighted Clutch System. The unique design increases clamping loads while still maintaining easy pedal efforts. Products like the Centerforce I, II, and Dual Friction clutches quickly became popular among off-roaders for reliability under harsh conditions without the excessive pedal forces usually associated with high-performance clutches.

For the fourth time, Centerforce gathered a group of stick-shift enthusiasts for the Centerforce Adventure Run. The goal of the three-day trek isn’t to tackle the toughest terrain but rather to explore the beautiful backcountry of Arizona. Most think only of deserts and heat when it comes to the Grand Canyon State, but there is so much more to Arizona than that. Rugged mountains, pine forests, abandoned mines, slot canyons and epic scenery can be found throughout the state, and the Centerforce Adventure Run would feature all of them.

The 300-mile journey started on the desert floor and made its way deep into the Hualapai Mountains before overnighting at the abandoned Boriana Mine complex. On the second day of the Centerforce Adventure Run, participants explored deeper into the Hualapais and tackled some of the adventure’s most challenging terrain on the way to the Gold King Mansion. The higher elevation brought cooler temperatures and numerous pine forests to meander through before stopping for the night in the Prescott National Forest. On the final day, the group would turn south and make their way out of the forest to conclude the epic trek at Centerforce’s Prescott headquarters.

The Centerforce Adventure Run was about more than seeing the sights of Arizona. It formed a bond between participants in a way that only multiple days of off-road exploration and adventure can.  A tight-knit group of stick-shift enthusiasts was brought even closer together with a shared love of manual transmissions. While smaller in number every year, they keep the manual alive as their preferred transmission. Long live the manual transmission.