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Penultimate Amazing
Most European cars had "fully synchronized" transmissions for decades, but American stick shifts often were not synchronized in first gear until the 60's or so. Especially some of the basic 3-speeds one might find in a basic car in the 60's and even the 70's had an unsynched first gear. And, of course, there were plenty of older cars whose sychros wore out, or were not very well made. My '69 Saab was fully synched, but you'd better double clutch into second or hear a crunch, and somewhere between 275 thousand miles and the final victory of the Vermont tinworm at 325 thousand, my Mercedes was getting pretty crunchy getting into third.
It's true, my VW Rabbit shifted nicely in between blown clutches. That one had the opposite issue, in which, owing to a really glitchy clutch, there were a few times when it was a better idea to jam it into gear clutchless than to hope the thing would both disengage and re-engage. Shifting up was easy, down a bit stressful. Certain Rabbits had an inside-out upside-down clutch design that tended to fly into little pieces.
