Question Of The Day: Why Do People Buy Manual Cars? - Yahoo Autos (blog)
Question: Why do people buy cars with manual transmissions. Why not just use automatic transmissions for all cars. If the companies that sell cars in the United States had their way, all their vehicles would have automatic transmissions for one simple reason: Because it’s cheaper. But if the car enthusiasts in the United States had their way, all their cars would have manual transmissions. For the manufacturers, it’s expensive to certify a manual-equipped car, and to offer a mix of cars with both manual and automatic transmissions. That’s not profitable when 95 per cent-plus of the vehicles they sell—or in many cases, all the vehicles—have automatics. Technological improvements are probably to blame for the radical abandonment of the stick shift in the States in the last two or three decades, and, conversely, the rapid adoption of the automatic. In 2014, less that four percent of all the passenger cars sold in the U. S. were manuals. For decades, the three or four-speed auto—nicknamed a “slushbox” by its detractors—was a rather joyless mechanism that appealed to owners who mainly needed a car to get from point A to point B. In traffic, it just sat there while you just sat there. Source: www.yahoo.com
