> Many years later, in the USA, I brought my car to a mechanic for some work. He said that the only thing he had as a loaner was a manual shift car, and he asked me if I could drive it. I said, of course, I used to drive manual shift trucks a lot. I left his shop, got stalled twice within 100 meters. I managed to come back and told him that he could keep his car, I will walk :)

The trouble with buying a used manual shift car in the US is that there's some decent probability that the transmission (or, as the mechanics would say, tranny) was probably abused. What I've seen of manual shift drivers (my family excluded) is that they go for it just so they could show off, wannabe race drivers. Mostly youngsters. There's no culture around it, they don't take pride in learning to do it smoothly, they want to play rough. So, buyer beware.