Lived abroad, Spain, for 4 years. Wife needed an automatic, she will never drive a stick ... long story.
So I go down to the local used car lot and they tell me no chance on a used automatic, they are just not available; wasted two weeks looking. Then I go to the local Ford dealer and bite the bullet to order a new Focus with automatic. He spends a couple weeks and tells me no luck, automatics are for handicapped and very tough to get. Sorry about that.
So then I tell him to widen his search; I don’t care about color, # of doors or how far he has to ship it ... I just NEED an automatic; and I want it ASAP. A month with an unhappy wife feels like a couple years!
So a week later the car arrives, 4 doors, some kind of seafoam green color with just about every option. Wife loved it and I have to say, it was a fantastic car. Very fast and nimble even with the automatic. It gripped the road tighter the faster you went. Loved it.
And I sold it to the first person that looked at it, another guy who had to have an automatic for his wife. I knew exactly how he felt ... but I charged him top dollar anyway. His wife was thrilled.
“Wife needed an automatic, she will never drive a stick ... long story.”
Sometime back in the 1970s, I read in Reader’s Digest (!) the story of a woman on a camping trip with her husband. He had a heart attack and all she could do was watch him die because she couldn’t drive the standard-transmission truck. Oops.
I once sat at a stoplight through, ISTR, 5 or so green-amber-red cycles while someone in a car she OBVOUSLY didn’t know how to drive did the *lurch*, *stall*, *restart*, *lurch*, *stall*, *restart* routine. Traffic was held up in all 4 1/2 (it is a weird intersection) directions but people were remarkably patient - surprising at rush hour. It was in the days before youtube, but it would have made a great video...