In 40 years of auto purchases, I have had only ONE car with an automatic transmission (my Prius which I just traded in for a stick shift car). In a conversation with the salesman, he noted that nowadays most buyers didn't even know how to drive one.
Do you know how to drive a stick? Do you currently drive one?
Clearly your sales guy is not of the youngest generation, or he never would have even thought to mention a manual transmission...
I learned to drive on a golf-course utility cart with a compound low gear that required double-clutching. It's fun! Beats the heck out of pulling stumps out by hand, too.
Those skills were a little slow to transfer to my first college car (no stumps, either) but in nearly 30 years we've only owned one automatic-- a 1994 Ford Taurus hauling wagon. Ford jokes notwithstanding, it sucked. One of its first acts was to destroy itself while my parents-in-law were passengers. Its rebuilt Frankenstein offspring used to rumble in "D" like an Abrams tank when stopped at intersections. We dealt with transmission leaks, random shift settings, and a host of other annoyances. Even periodic maintenance was fraught with suspense.
The Prius's CVT is a joy to drive, but it feels testosterone-deficient to slap around a little paddle shifter. Maybe I could cheer myself up by pretending that it's the same shifter model used by NASCAR drivers. You definitely have to be careful how you wave your latté cup around the dashboard, though, or you'll end up out of gear before you have a chance to curse about it.
Our Altima's manual transmission, however, is my favorite. We've been talking about going to a single-car family after our kid leaves the nest, so it might be my last manual transmission too.
I taught both my kids to drive a stick, and both prefer it.
For many months our kid just didn't see the point. After [-]teaching[/-] showing her a stick shift, I had to agree with her. Part of the issue is that she views a clutch pedal as a binary device that's either "in" or "out" with no intermediate pause in the quantum-jump process. She apparently attempts to make the transition as quickly as possible, too, in order to preserve her delicate ankle muscles. And it's no fun to watch a teenager red-line an engine in neutral just before the clutch mysteriously pops out.
I offered to show her advanced skills like "downshifting", "peeling rubber", heel&toe braking, and "doughnuts" but she kept muttering about losing her license and mid-life crises.
However this cute guy classmate drives a Jeep with a roll cage, huge knobby tires, and a big ol' meat-grinding floor-mounted gearbox with a long stirring handle. She now sees a purpose in being able operate a manual transmission. I hope that purpose is focused on driving the Jeep.
I've heard that most Mustang buyers request an automatic transmission. I hope it's an urban legend. Seems like that that type of option on that type of car should come with free [-]castration[/-] testosterone-reduction surgery.