[jcp123]

Ehh...my Echo’s auto outlasted its radiator when I sent it off at 280-something-thousand miles.

But let’s bet honest. Americans are lazy about driving. Lack of blinkers during lane changes, high beams at night, crappy lane discipline - for a car culture, we actually care almost zero about driving. So of course automatics, which take another driving burden off, are popular as hell here. If you lack any sort of economy mindset (like my wife), autos pretty much do the same or better for FE. DCTs dominate the number columns in buff books, so casual car guys get the “faster” car, but they don’t care about the feel.

So what they are saying isn’t really all that far off. Manuals are dying. That’s just how it is - and why I’ll cherish the 5-speed in my Civic for a good long while. 186k miles means I can slow roast the experience and have it for many years. By the time it goes away, I’ll have a thin crop to choose from, I suppose.

Manuals are dying off in big trucks too. The automated manuals are taking a big portion of the market. My company has a large national fleet and has only bought automated manuals for a few years now - I’d be surprised if there’s more than a few dozen actual manual trucks left in our fleet - but trucks get some advantages from an auto which cars really don’t, so it’s a bit of a different situation.

I am almost sure that at 35, I am the youngest person to know how to drive a manual trans in my family - including in-laws, which is a really huge family, lol. I laughed my ass off when my nieces, the oldest of which was maybe 10 or 12, was awed by window cranks in our Kia.