I learned on my friend's 89 Jeep, and my mom's 81 Buick Skylark. The Jeep was a pain in the neck because the seat was not right and my feet couldn't reach the pedal to push it all the way down. Lots of gear grinding.
The Buick was great in one respect- it had 200000 miles on it (it was my grandfather's commuter car for 10 years, and he had a long commute) so everything was nice and worn in. But the gas pedal was stiff and the idle was about 400 rpm, so it was a real pain to get right. Only once did I stall it so badly that I separated the exhaust manifold from the rest of the exhaust system.
But I turned pro when I bought a 99 Ford Contour for my own commuter car. 130,000 miles in 8 years. That was the smoothest shifting and smoothest engaging clutch I've ever seen. I was so proud of it when a couple of (muscle car/ truck driving) buddies took it out for a spin and said it was a really fun car to drive.
(I also enjoyed driving my buddy's Civic SI with the weird shifter. I couldn't drive it if I looked at the shifter- it confused me. But if I just put my hand on it and worked it, it was fine. My only problem with the car was that it has no low end torque. It winds up to 8000 no problem, but I don't like driving like that.)