Sorry for late reply.
Originally Posted by
corrado33
On the other hand, (a) manuals cars get better gas mileage, (b) are more fun, and (c) offer more control.
(a) Arguable, (b) agree, (c) agree.
(a) Some modern auto transmissions have better fuel consumption than their manual counterparts. I used to love pouring over the Gov. of Can. car fuel consumption publications, and automatics started catching up with their manual brothers more than a decade ago.
My Mazda (six speed manual) gets slightly worse mileage than the auto version, but that might be because the manual has different ratios. I enjoy driving it in busy city traffic a bit more than the auto transmission car it replaced, and much much more in more interesting driving scenarios.