How America lost its love for the stick shift
Speaking as someone who has owned a number of sports cars with manual transmissions, I can tell you why I finally made the switch to automatic:<p>Adaptive cruise control in stop and go traffic.<p>I used to have to deal with a six-speed manual transmission in stop and go traffic for an hour every day, and it was pure torture. I mean, sure, it was fun for a weekend drive in the mountains, but it sucked the rest of the time.<p>Oh, and as a side note, my new car with an automatic transmission and a 400+ HP engine accelerates from zero to 60 faster and smoother than any one of my previous cars. I will never go back! And I have paddle shifters, if I ever want to manually control the gears.