It only lasts a split second before disappearing. A surrendered emotion, instantly reined back in. Jonathon Zimmer is actually enjoying this, and there’s a momentary pause while he seems to decide if it’s okay to feel this way, or if it’s a small betrayal.
Jonathon is a pretty ordinary 17-year-old. He gets decent grades, has a part-time job, and when I meet him for the first time, his shirt is half untucked. A lanky kid with straight brown hair, he is polite, yet a little shy.
Can’t blame him. He has walked out of his school on a recent winter day to take a driving lesson. While there are frequently driving instructors parked out front of high schools, it’s not often that instructor is Philippe Létourneau – BMW’s chief driving instructor and a team member on Canada’s Worst Driver. Jonathon watches the TV show. He’s grinning as he shakes hands with the energetic Létourneau, a man who is clearly passionate about driving and cars. And talking.
In the middle of a paddock of regulation yellow school buses sits a trifecta of gleaming BMWs: a 2012 Valencia Orange 1 Series M Coupe, a 2012 Red Mini Coupe Cooper S, and a 2011 Blue 135i M Sport. The one thing they have in common? They all have manual transmissions.
Jonathon already knows how to drive; he has finished the classroom portion of his driver training, and is about to embark on the in-car. The obstacle before him isn’t a looming road test: it’s the car with the manual transmission sitting in his driveway back home.
His parents bought the 1999 BMW 328i a decade ago, and it only has 100,000 km on it. It’s a beautiful car, but for a teen still in the early stages of driving, the clutch has proved daunting. It’s an added layer of complication to a skill that is still new, and even the knowledge that this could be his car – this is his car – hasn’t been enough to calm the demons of stall.
Practice, you’re probably thinking. The kid just needs practice. You’d be right of course, and for many of us, learning to drive a stick was a rite of passage: the car owner sitting in the passenger’s seat grinding his or her teeth as you grinded the gears, stalled on hills, and believed it would never work.
It’s probably what Jonathon’s dad planned, but it didn’t work out that way. John Zimmer died unexpectedly a year ago at age 53; Jonathon had turned 16 just weeks before. For this teen, that particular rite of passage was suddenly altered, a Plan B never considered because men with 16-year-old sons don’t bank on suddenly leaving them.
You might be planning just as John Zimmer was. It might be a motorcycle or the car you’ve been faithfully restoring – or just storing – that you hope will one day mean as much to your children as it does to you. You might be watching them grow, listening to them ask to ride it, to drive it, to do more than just wait patiently. You smile to yourself, knowing the wait is worthwhile, that it’s about so much more than handing over a set of keys. When you give your children a possession or skill you treasure, you are giving them a piece of yourself.
Marion Zimmer, a new widow, watched her son back up in the driving process. Saddled with the unexpected overnight crush of complete responsibility, she recognized her son’s struggle. While driver training on manual transmissions is available, it would have meant travelling outside their community, adding hours to a jammed schedule, and delaying Jonathon from getting his licence. She was fully prepared to give her son all the training he needed. Instead, she watched in dismay as his confidence evaporated. He repeatedly ask her to consider selling the car, and moving to an automatic.
