[nzp]

OK, European here, maybe it's just the title wording, but the article left me somewhat confused. For as long as I can remember ('80s child) I was convinced that the US car market (and consumer preferences) were almost exclusively automatic. Even popular culture reinforced this (I don't remember ever seeing a manual transmission car in American movies and TV shows). Now this article suggests that even recently there was an actual competition between the two, that America even had love, no less, for stick shift. I don't know what to believe anymore, is there a reality even...

[luminiferous]

The American car market as a whole are almost entirely automatic due to overall consumer preferences. However, there is also a minority of enthusiast drivers who greatly prefer manuals and are very vocal as such. Cars that are marketed more towards the enthusiast end of the market are those that you'll find stick shifts in more often, e.g. Miatas, Porsches, Corvettes, etc. These days though, even the enthusiast cars are selling many more automatics than manuals.