The older I get the more I dislike change...
I still travel for work a bit, but back in the mid to late '80s a few years I was out on the road 285 nights. I really liked doing the traveling, but now I hate to just go to the airport. Old and cranky is what I'm becoming.
Yes, I've driven a few old tractors with the shifter between my legs and found no issues with it.
I'm sure that I would get used to the left hand shifters. I used to ride British motorcycles and most then had left foot brake and right foot shifters. Even the early Harley Sportsters thru '75 had right foot shift and left foot brake.
Over here winter ice racing was big back in the '60s and '70s. The BSA Goldstar 500 and the Victor 441 were great ice bikes because they had the right foot shifters and they had tons of lower end torque and didn't need to be shifted quite as often.
Our family had a small back in the mid to late '60s and during that time we took on Bridgestone motorcycles. I remember the 175cc twin had a shift shaft out both sides. It came left foot shift, but you could buy a kit to swap sides of the shifter and brake pedal. Just thought it was a great feature, but I never say anyone use it.
Back in my early days I had a beat up Chevy Impala SS with a 409 4 speed. The trans was a Muncie "rock crusher" 4 speed. These were close ratio and didn't have much for syncros. They always made noise when you shifted, hence the nick name Rock Crusher. About the best way to shift them was to power shift, but that was not always an option, in fact very seldom could you actually do your power shifting because of traffic and the local cops etc.
So when British cars had column shifters, which side were they on, left or right? My cousin had a Nash Metropolitan and the shifter was actually located in the dash next to the column and had a little ball socket that the shifter stuck out through.
Sorry for rambling on and on guys. I just couldn't get my finger to stop moving...
