HOW TO - Pop Start a Car

(This VW van is for sale at samba.com, if you're in the market.)

If you don't know how to drive a stick-shift car, otherwise known as "standard," this How-To won't help you much, but may I recommend that you have someone teach you. You never know when you'll be on The Amazing Race, and almost every season, there's some team that has a hard time because they don't know how to drive a stick-shift car.

This How-To is for those of you who know how to drive a stick-shift, but it won't start, either because the battery is dead or the starter isn't working.

I learned how to do this because I had to. We owned a Volkswagen van much like the one pictured above. At the time we owned it, it didn't have the cool status it would have now. It was just a family car with a faulty starter and we couldn't afford to have the starter replaced.

The solution: pop start it.

How do you do this? First, you turn the key to the "on" position.

Second, you push in the clutch and put the car in gear--preferably 1st gear.

Third, you get the car moving. This can be done by either having someone push the car or letting it start rolling down an incline.

Once the car is moving at a decent speed, swiftly let out the clutch and the car should "pop start." Don't be surprised at the little jolt you'll experience. This is normal.

There you have it. The more skilled you are, the slower the car can be moving when you pop start it.

Anyway, an embarrassing little story about my pop starting of our VW van. I was eighteen and worked in the office at Tyson Foods in Missouri. There was no hill to park the van on, so I couldn't let it roll to pop start it, so a nice guy who drove the forklift offered to push the car to start it. For months, I'd call over to the dock when I was ready to go home for the day, he'd drive the forklift over, position it behind the van with the two front prongs carefully under the car, and he'd push the car while I pop started it.

It was embarrassing, but I was good at the pop start, so it never took too long.

One day, he came and pushed the car and it didn't start. We tried again. And again. Usually I could do it in a pretty small space in the parking lot, but that day it wasn't working and I tried over and over. He pushed me until there was nowhere to go but onto the street. It still didn't start, so he pushed me onto the street. I tried again to no avail. He pulled the forklift onto the street and we tried again. It still didn't start. We made it almost all the way around the block, trying time and time again, before I looked down and realized that

THE KEY WASN'T ON.

Horrified, embarrassed, and glad he couldn't see what I was doing, I turned the key to the "on" position and on the very next attempt, I successfully pop started the car. Then I smiled and waved and he gave me a thumbs up.

I never told him it was my fault, but I was very careful to be sure the car was turned to the on position from that point on.