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Originally Posted by you&me
I'm fine, but I'm just being honest - a manual transmission has its place in a car enthusiast's world, but the reality is that place is a smaller niche than the online cheerleaders would indicate (or admit).
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This is obvious, but popular doesn't mean good. I doubt anyone here would suggest that outside of a few models (i.e., the new Z car) it makes business sense to sell a manual. But that doesn't mean the car wouldn't be better, from a driving perspective, if it had one. So this argument...
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It varies from dealer to dealer, but manual orders are consistently well under 10%.
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... is like judging the quality of a movie by how much it makes at the box office. I don't care if Transformers 2 pulled in a billion dollars, it's a piece of #### that I want no part of. Popular opinion is a poor basis for conclusions about what's good and what isn't, because, well, most people are kind of dumb. Or in this case, they mostly have different priorities when buying a vehicle.
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In my opinion, a manual transmission has its place in the automotive timeline, but we're right near the end of relevance in new cars. There was a time when a manual was a simple part of a simple system, but now it's more often a simple part of a complex system that simply doesn't integrate well.
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I totally disagree. You haven't supported this conclusion at all. All you've done is give sales figures to show that the broader public don't actually want to buy manual versions of most cars, not that they don't "integrate well". There are plenty of cars where a manual doesn't make much sense. There are others where it does, and where it significantly improves the driving experience. There are still others where you could go either way, and see benefits and drawbacks from either transmission depending on your personal preferences and what you're buying the car to do.