Thread: MANUAL or AUTO? which one floats your boat!

Saw in another thread a couple of people get excited about manual vehicles. My wife and I personally won,t drive anything else. We will admit it can be a bit of a drag in peak hour traffic, but other than that a manual keeps your mind on the job at hand and makes driving fun.
So which one excites you?

Manual! More control, more power (no power lost through a torque converter), more fun, forces you to focus on driving. My next vehicle will be a stick for sure.
Driving is for driving--not texting, watching youTube, eating etc!

I say manual. You wouldn't want to ride an automatic motorbike. Unless you were somehow mentally deficient.
But my wife can not drive a manual car, so our car is auto.

my boat has sails...

Manual all the way. I hate not being able to feel what the car's doing.

Manual, as God intended it.

Manual, no servo. Never had anything else.

Manual definately! I live in London and my last car was an auto and, to be honest, I got a bit bored driving it because there was so little involvement. Just stop, go, left and right and no need to listen to what the engines doing.

I had a manual Honda Civic a few years back that had VTEC (8000 rpm red line!) and it was so much fun to flick through the box up to the red and decide exactly when to change gear. So when I bought my new car a few months back it had to be a manual. Especially as its a 3 litre drop top, no point in having a sports car with a slush box on it after all!

Living in London, I sometimes get sick of the whole clutch in-out dance when stuck in traffic that crawls, but once I'm on the open road or motorway it has to be manual. More control and power when you want it, immediately, not two seconds after you floor the pedal.

That said, when I visit N. America and hire a car I do get a kick out of the different driving experience -- auto and cruise control.

The whole London/outside London thing had me considering one of those hybrids which are auto and manual when you want. Anyone got some experience of those?

[Whenever I talk to a mechanic in the UK about auto vs manual they always tell me that repairing a gearbox on an auto is much more expensive than a manual, and the clutch etc. tends to wear out quicker. So there's an economic reason too.]

If I'm a passenger I prefer an auto. Because I live in Thailand, and Thai taxi drivers don't know how to drive, manual mean getting sea sick by the time you get where you are going. Thais love to ride the cluch. Sometimes it is funny to watch someone drive who really has no idea what they are doing.