>I giggled reading your posts on driving a manual and trying to do other things at the same time. Back when I was a teen and my mother smoked (many many moons ago), we took a lot of trips cross country with friends. It never ceased to amaze our friends that she could drive a stick shift in San Franciso or the Colorado rockies, smoke, drink coffee, and talk all at the same time.

Since I was in San Francisco last year, I'd say that even in my best years, coffee would be too much. The rest I'd still be able to do, though SF is exactly the place where I'd agree that automatic has some advantage ;).

> I rode across the country in with 4 others in the original 1973 Honda civic (see a link below). That car got 40 mpg and only cost 2,000.00 :o) Of course, the safety rating was about the lowest of all cars on the market. I learned to drive a standard and only got my first automatic transmission about 8 years ago. I can't imagine driving some Colorado mountain roads in an automatic. Nowadays, I don't think many teens learn to drive a standard.

There was a case here in the area when someone carjacked a guy, then noticed the stick shift. The carjacker was unable to drive stick, so he forced the guy to drive him home, so he'd take the guy's van, which was automatic. Of course, he didn't get far - carjacking is done in ten seconds or not at all.

Which is why our car (and the daughter's coupe) are stick shifting. If 90% of Americans can't drive stick, that also means that about 90% of car thieves also can't. Which just lowers the stealability factor tenfold.