Stick shift driving soon a lost skill?

Noooo! Say it isn’t so. Stick shift vehicles likely will be extinct within 15 to 20 years?

That’s the word from Ivan Drury, an analyst at auto information company Edmunds.com, who made that prediction this week even as sales of vehicles with manual transmissions increased during the first half of this year to 7 percent of total vehicle sales, versus 3.9 percent for all of 2011.

Drury attributed that increase to "the growing age of vehicle trade-ins bringing more manual drivers back to market," more smaller cars on the road, and other factors.

One of those other factors might be that fewer people know how to drive a stick shift anymore. But, still, for those who like being able to determine what gear they’re driving in — which can help with gas mileage — and, more important, want the ability to push-start their cars if their batteries are dead, stick shifts are the way to go. Ever try to push-start an automatic?

Company tries on the color green

Going green has taken on new meaning for The Gas Co., which just changed its brand name to Hawai‘iGas.

Doing business here for more than a century — though these days it’s owned by Macquarie Infrastructure Co., based in New York — the company said its new name "better reflects the company’s identity as an important part of Hawaii’s energy community: proudly local and fully committed to clean technology and innovation."

To emphasize that point, its new logo is colored green — just in case you had any doubts about the image it’s trying to portray.