Sticks are a lot of fun, and if you do it right they get a little bit better gas mileage. Its not that they break down less, but they are generally easier and cheaper to fix when they do.

Correct. You just have to find the "sweet spot" to gear-in at the lowest rpm. I had my F-150 timed perfectly with very little clutch work and my mpg was 3 over the automatic version. Plus the down-shift saved countless dollars on brake work. And since I did quite a bit of off road driving, the extra control saved my ass more than once in a dry arroyo 100 miles from a tow. Of course manuals are more trouble in stop and go commutes, so currently I'm satisfied with my 4runner auto.

I wish I learned how to drive a stick first. it would've been so much easier, and more convenient.

I found most cars I've driven seem to be happy between 2,000 and 3,000 rpm - though that assumes you have a rev-counter, and not all cars do. You get used to hearing the engine note quickly enough though, and whether or not it's labouring. Stop-and-go can be a pain with a manual gearbox, and quite literally: I've often ended up with a rather stiff knee after being stuck in particularly heavy traffic.

I'm reminded of another car feature I'm glad to see the back of: the manual choke. I haven't driven a car with one of these horrible things in years and years. They seem to be mostly remembered for increased fuel-consumption and bad performance if you forget to push them in once the engine's warmed up (most have a warning light, but it was still easy to forget) but their worst feature was engine flooding, which was pretty much a guaranteed "come back in an hour before you try again" situation. Which I did many times.

Manual choke? How old are you...

"The wisdom of youth combined with the vitality of age", or something like that!

I learned with a manual and have owned a couple of manual cars. My current car is automatic, though. I live in a big city and it can be hectic to drive even an automatic. I miss manual sometimes, but not in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Automatic transmissions can be expensive to fix if you have transmission problems. They're more complex than purely manual ones. Modern transmissions in general are pretty solid unless you get unlucky, though.

I have a manual choke and sequential transmission, 'cause I'm cool like that .

"Unlucky" seems to involve me driving them: I've been the nemesis of several gearboxes. Shame they're so expensive to fix: the one that seized up was quite disconcerting, it's not really cool to have the wheels completely lock solid when you're driving and I paid most of the value of the car to have a new one fitted (the old one was unsalveagable, apparently). Another one would no longer go into fifth gear, and the garage who fixed it said it had "disintegrated". A pool car I shared with a co-worker was "never quite the same" after I'd driven it: curiously she decided that I was excused any further driving before I had the chance to break it completely. There are other examples, but you get the idea.

I hasten to add I could probably break an automatic before anyone thinks they'd be immune to my driving habits. Hmm, another car was never quite the same after I went up an embankment at 40 or 50 mph and found myself in a ploughed field. It was still driveable but had interesting steering afterwards, and caused much hilarity when another co-worker quipped that my car was wearing a grass skirt since I seemed to still have most of said field still attached to it.

I learned on manual transmissions and drove them fifteen years before I got my first automatic. I won't buy a manual again. As far as manuals being harder to break than automatics, my brother can break either just by looking at them. Boy is he really hard on transmissions. I won't let him near my car. :chaos:

Manual transmission is like Fallout. Automatic is like Fallout 3.

You can't put any car, manual or automatic, into reverse while driving. It would have just made a loud grinding noise, and gone into neutral.

I learned to drive on an Automatic, then my best friend taught me how to drive a Manual. I haven't driven a manual since I was 18 though, and quite frankly probably couldn't drive one very effectively(if at all) now-a-days. I prefer my automatic really, less to pay attention to, and since I like to drive just to relax sometimes, automatic is the way to go.

I learned on a manual. I like it; it's certainly fun, but I think it would get old after a while, especially in the city. My current car is, however, an automatic. I'm just glad there isn't this apparent European (and other parts of the world) stigma about automatics in the US -- most people drive them over here.

It is possible, but only at fairly low speeds: in my experience it makes more of a "clunk" than a grinding noise (I've only heard that when I've been really careless with the clutch) though I've never succeeded in putting a gearbox into reverse at any significant speed. Which is as well, considering one potentially unfortunate sequence of cars saw the latter with reverse gear in the same position as the previous car's sixth gear: it didn't have any of the usual contraptions to prevent reverse from engaging, but it wouldn't do so at 80mph anyway. The results would have been interesting, but the sort of interesting I'd rather not experience.

Manuals are where it's at. My dad taught me how to drive a manual when I was like 13. I'm young enough that I can I refuse to drive an automatic and not sound like a [censored], because I actually do. When I was looking to buy my own car a few years ago, I had a list of potential cars to buy, and then I purged the automatics from the list.

Its how most people drive here in the UK, manual. Far as I know, its different in the States; all the rental cars we've had have been automatic when I was over there.

American drivers are a lot more laid back in my opinion than British ones

I drive one, it gets me from point a to point b.

Manual is great (and what I drive) until you are stuck in stop and go traffic for 2-3 hours

I've spent 14 years driving both manual and automatics, and without a doubt I prefer manual's*.

The asterisk is with the exception of certain, hilly towns with stop lights on extremely slanted roads like which would be found throughout downtown San Francisco. For that I'd prefer automatic even though I'd never hit anyone in SF driving a manual.

The biggest deals about driving a manual that I notice over an automatic is 1) significantly less repair needed on the transmission 2) someone who knows how to drive a manual will wear down their brakes significantly less than with an automatic, and 3) easier to push start the car with a manual if necessary, even though I've done it with an auto as well, and 4) wear on transmission is less especially when knowing when to downshift and upshift properly. If an automatic was really that good at shifting you wouldn't even need 1/2/3/L. Go up some hills and watch as you have to slam the gas which puts significant stress on the transmission. 5) Obviously http://www.fueleconomy.gov/, when you compare the same cars side by side with their manual counterparts.

Another thing with manuals is it keeps your brain active, since you constantly are down and upshifting, so experience says it's more difficult to lull one's self to sleep as I've seen happen with a few friends driving autos. Also, in an automatic, when things like your gear shifter cable goes out, you're [censored]. To avoid $300 towing fees I tweaked it into second gear where it wouldn't shift into any other and drove 65 miles home going 20-30mph.. without getting pulled over.

With all that said, wife and I have chosen to get a Prius and some random SUV (likely 4WD for easier snow driving), both of which are automatic. Will be getting my Suzuki GSX-R bike and probably a second manual commuter-type car.

I think that's an important point. Seems anything that leaves me feeling too "disconnected" from driving is more likely to make my mind wander, which isn't a good thing.

Having to get a new clutch now and then is expensive and annoying, though I guess overall it's still less maintenance than with an automatic.

My family's had a Toyota Hilux for 12 years, which I've owned for four and a half. It has only just last week gone into the shop for a big fix because the clutch started to crap out. In 12 years, it's only this once had repairs to the clutch. This is also impressive because that ute has done 260,000 kilometers and has had some rough times.

On that note, I love driving manual. Especially now that my ute's been all fixed up and drives like a dream now! I don't like automatics. I feel less secure in them and like I have less control while driving. I find in an auto I tend to come up to corners too fast then have to be way too heavy on the brakes. I guess it's what I'm used to though.

My other gripe about autos is in relation to a particular car, my dad's Range Rover. It was a v8 petrol, so you'd think it would have a decent amount of go, but that thing got so confused with it's gearing you'd be trying to accelerate, it would either be far too high a gear, or far too low, end result almost zero acceleration. You'd have to do a lot of accelerator/brake pumping to try get it into the right place then all of a sudden it would just absolutely take off. I've pissed a few people off when the gears come right and it takes off as people are trying to pass me

*edit* sentence made no sense.

I have always wondered, can you go into neutral in a automatic and coast? My style of driving is such that when I see a red light ahead I go into neutral and try and coast so I still am going forwards when I the queue starts moving. I also try and coast down hills (As in, a long gentle hill, you never need to go out of neutral). Can you do similar things in an automatic?

I wore out the clutch too much, my switch to automatic was a good one for me. Still, very useful to know manual.

What's an Ute? just curious, I've seen that term before, but no idea what it means at all.(besides how it appears in the context given, which would Imply it means "car" or "vehicle". In that case, how did "ute" come about to mean that?)