Quote:
Originally Posted by Diver
One must ask, exactly what is different about US customers that makes them want a manual transmission when nobody else does. Beats me, and I live in the US.
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I posted an answer to this in the 7-speed manual thread:
In Europe about 80% of cars are manual transmissions; hell, one of the tour buses I was on in Italy had an 8-speed manual. The reason is that cars are a hell of a lot more expensive pretty much everywhere else in the world, so the marginal cost of anything except a traditional manual is MUCH more significant there -- so most people get manual. And consequently, pretty much everyone everywhere outside the US knows how to drive stick, so it's not seen as some sort of enthusiast Jedi power the way it is here. In fact the non-US enthusiasts and wealthier people are almost always driving SMG/PDK/DCT if their cars can be ordered thusly, because not only would they not impress anybody by driving driving stick, but having the "faster, more advanced, (usually) more expensive" transmission there is a status symbol, so that's the alternative they pick.