I prefer a manual. My car (my first one, I might add) is a manual. I think it is fun as hell, and I will probably not own an automatic for the rest of my life.
This.[M said:artin]Manual is just as fun to drive, don't get me wrong, but it does get very tedious when compared to Auto. This may just be because I live in a really busy city with high amounts of traffic (Chicago), however, and constantly shifting up and down during rush hour got annoying as hell.
Rayder said:For me, a car is simply transportation from point A to point B. I've grown out of the racing phase of my life nearly 20 years ago and have long since realized that beating on a car will only shorten its lifespan, unless I want to do constant maintenance on it. If I want to race, I'll do it in a video game. All I need is a small car with good gas mileage, not scads-and-wads of horsepower and racing bling.
The only real need I see for manual transmission is for racing and hauling heavy loads. Since I don't race around the city streets like a jackass with a death wish, and I have no truck to haul heavy loads with, coupled with the fact that I live in a busy city with lots of traffic, I don't need the extra annoyance of constant shifting with a manual transmission.
I drive a boring, dilapidated 1995 Saturn SL2 with an automatic transmission and nearly 200,000 miles on it and no bling (unless you count the GBAtemp bumper sticker on it as bling). It gets me there and that's all I need. I don't pretend that a production model 4-cylinder P.O.S. is any kind of race car like all the idiot ricers I see racing around in their econobox's, with their coffee-can mufflers that make their car sound like a moped on steroids, useless overdone spoilers and ground effects, fancy rims, ridiculous lowered suspension and lousy paint jobs. I have no shortcomings I need to compensate for.
I've owned a manual transmission car before and I could drive it well enough, but it just seemed like too much of a pain in the ass to have to shift all the time when I could just have an automatic and not worry about it, so I sold it to some fool who was drooling all over it and he riced it out and crashed it. Oh! But not until he had it blowing smoke like a factory smokestack from beating on it too much....dumb ass.
I still fondly remember the day some butt-head pulled up next to me at a red light and revved his engine, wanting to race. I put put my car in neutral and revved along with the fool, but when the light turned green, I just casually put the car in drive and proceeded normally. He tore off the line like a bat out of hell, nearly hit some guy who blew the red light and then got busted by the cops. I tooted the horn at him as I drove by. I guess I won that race.
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