[Colex]

Having lived in the US, Canada and Europe, I have spent a lot of time driving both manual and automatic transmissions. I would say that the answer "being more in touch with the car" is not far fetched. I enjoy driving, different cars give me a different experience. But I find driving automatic cars very boring, and that's about the only reason (might be a bad reason, but still valid). I can drive both just as well, I never really thought about the fuel efficiency (I have a motorbike for driving around city that will take care of that) nor have I ever heard anyone mentioning that - I have heard that they were more expensive, but I've never tried to buy one in Europe.

Regarding the size of the cars. US cities have been well planned and designed for cars, while a lot of European cities haven't really been planned for cars back then. So, when you live in a city like London, most people will go for a smaller sized car rather than an SUV (or other types of big cars common in the US), otherwise going through those small two-way traffic street and find parking can be annoying. Otherwise, I might not mind as much having a big comfortable automatic car.