If so, would you ever go back to using a car with a stick shift? I still keep an old car for off-road use, and have used stick shift when needed. I would not go back to a car without it though. It's just not safe. I am about 3/4 way there when I am driving a stick. I still need a lot of practice though. Why should you keep a car for off-road use and need a stick shift? I can not give up my stick shift. I really like driving stick. I've always been a stick fan, although I have driven standard a few times. After driving manual for awhile, I don't like driving a car with automatic tranny. It seems sluggish compared to a manual tranny. The best way to think about it is you need 4 wheels to drive and 3 for steering and braking (manual, standard tranny). With the 3 it doesn't matter so much which is on the left side and which is on the right. You are essentially driving a 2 wheeled bike (which by definition is not really a vehicle since it has no suspension). You can see that the standard tranny is not really a 3 wheeler, it is more like a 3 speed car. With the stick, you are really driving a 4 wheeler and so the tranny should always be on the right side. I think once you start to think like this you can see how important it is that the driver be in control at all times. The main reason I don't want a manual trans anymore is because of how the engine works. In a standard trans, the engine can rev out to about 5-6k RPM while driving. However, if I need to stop the car, it doesn't like to rev up, especially if you have a heavy foot on the gas pedal. Instead, it will rev down and lose power at higher RPMs. If you don't give it enough time to rev back up to speed, the car will start to slow down due to its inertia and eventually will lose power and speed. This makes standard tranny feel sluggish to me. With a stick, if I take my foot off the gas, the car slows down. I can start to rev the engine again once the revs drop. The car does not lose power and the engine can keep running at higher RPMs, which allows the revs to increase to higher speeds more easily. I think my experience was even better with the Mazda 6 standard tranny where if I used my clutch, I could rev the engine all the way up to about 8k RPMs and maintain that speed for a long time. I really like the fact that a stick shift allows you to rev the engine more freely. Not just on the highway, but while driving. When I drive an automatic trans car and see the revs dropping quickly to just a few hundred RPMs, I get really depressed. At that point, I feel like my car is just an overgrown bicycle (which is what it is to me) and my foot off the gas pedal has no effect on my speed or power. My other reasons are related to the way I drive. I tend to speed a lot in the winter and in the spring and summer months. In the summer, I like to leave the lights on even when I don't need to use them (I'm only paying 25 cents per day for them). This makes me slower to react on the road. The other part of this that I can't stand is if I am driving on a dry day and the road has lots of potholes and bumps and I am only driving on 2 or 3 of the 4 wheels, or if the road is wet with some puddles. I can't stand having to constantly put more gas in the car to make it stop bouncing or if it starts bouncing, to brake to slow down. Also, I've noticed with the stick shift that my car handles a lot better. I can always make it do anything I want it to do, even when I am driving in a really stupid way. If I would not use a stick, I would have to drive a standard trans car where I have to keep the revs at the correct RPM. I feel that the tranny would make it harder to control the car. I could not drive that way forever, as the engine would just get really worn out by the end of the car's life span. If it has to work so hard just to maintain speed, how would it work under different conditions such as climbing a hill or accelerating quickly when you need more power? Also, how would you have to control the tranny if you are going downhill or trying to catch up to another car when the clutch is down? I have seen that standard tranny on a car do amazing things. It can climb some really big hills. I have read on some forums that some of those old Jeeps can do 70 miles per hour on a flat surface at full throttle! You may think that stick shift would be hard for a beginner to learn to drive a stick in the first place. What would you suggest then? Keep a stick for yourself, and then get rid of the manual for the rest of the people in the family? I really like driving stick, and would like to teach my spouse and daughter to drive stick too. I have seen the stick in all different types of cars in different conditions. It really does not matter what kind of car it is, as long as it is mechanically sound. I have driven stick in a Porsche 928S, a Porsche 911s, BMW 335i, BMW 530i, BMW 320i, BMW 1er, BMW 328i, BMW 328i (the one with an overdrive), BMW M3, and Jaguar XK. I have not driven stick in a Ford. I tried driving a Mazda 3 sedan for a while, but I did not like driving it. I had my wife drive it and she did not like the steering. I didn't like that the clutch was directly in front of the driver, and it had no neutral. It also felt like it was riding low. It's a small car, but it has almost no space. I never felt like I was going to slide or go off the road when I drove it. I felt safe in it, but it felt like I was driving a 4 wheeler (since it only had 2 wheels). I have driven a Mitsubishi Eclipse turbo sedan. I do like driving it, but I did not like driving stick. I also didn't like how it felt like it was riding low to the ground and the brake felt like it was in the wrong place. My father drives a stick. He is driving a Mitsubishi Lancer. I don't know what year, but it has manual tranny. I used to ask him if he ever gets tired of driving stick. He did not seem to like it, and he would never say anything other than "yes" in answer to my question. I had the Mazda 6 for about 8 months. I loved it because it was fast, comfortable, and fun to drive. My only complaint is that it didn't feel like it was in my control at times. I am driving stick in my current car, a used Jeep Liberty Sport. It is a 5 speed manual. I just bought it on Sunday (it came with 2 keys and that was it. No manual, nothing), and I just started driving it on Tuesday. I have about 10,000 miles on it now. My main complaint is that the tranny feels underpowered. The gears are really low. For example, my 1st gear seems like a really tall gear when I am going downhill and you have to use clutch all the time (even when going downhill at around 20 MPH). The gear ratios are crazy. For example, from 1st gear to 2nd is in the region of 1:7! So I can go from almost 100 mph to 0 mph. Then from 2nd to 3rd is 1:5.2! It seems like you have to go through the gears slowly to get any power or acceleration. Maybe it works this way because I have only been driving it for a week? The clutch is really hard to get to release, and it does not have a clutch-to-throttle linkage or a clutch-to-shift linkage like in my FJ Cruiser. It is in between a motorcycle clutch and a standard trans clutch. So I have to move my whole foot across the shifter, which takes time. For the same thing, I can move my finger along the stick. For years, people have been talking about what they would do to change the automatic tranny to a manual. I say the car should just keep the stick. I do not see how having an automatic tranny will make driving safer. Instead, I feel like it would just make driving harder on the engine and transmission. I have been wanting a manual car for a long time. I had the 3 speed Mazda 6 for 8 months, and it was just my 1st year of driving a stick. I feel like I have gone from not knowing much to knowing a lot in 8 months. If it was safe for me to drive stick, I would like to take my daughter to get her license, and I would be able to teach her to drive stick too. Instead of trying to teach her to drive standard tranny, which I have a hard time doing myself