[throwaway0a5e]

A manual transmission means your gear shift points are beholden to you and not to some corporate bean counter who's going to lean on the engineer to re-tune the shift points so he can get a bonus for squeezing out an extra .01mpg.

It's about corporate interests (cram a small engine in a big car and don't ever let the thing rev if you can help it) being directly contradictory to what makes for pleasant merging or hell climbing experience (let the thing rev and don't up-shift until it's time). This is a large part of why manuals stuck around so long in Europe.

[dubya]

I always hated automatics because I had only driven cheap rental cars with automatics. My family got a Mazda 3 with automatic a few years back, and it's so much better. I still prefer a stick in some situations, but it's not constant misery the way an Aveo or a Versa or a Yaris were.

[LorenPechtel]

That's not been my experience. Automatics will upshift given half an opportunity but mine behaves reasonably when you step on the gas. It can even very smoothly downshift if needed to deliver the power.