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To: DeplorablePaul
Being able to drive a manual transmission is now a lost art.

Except in Europe, Asia, and other places outside North America. All the cars that I have rented in Ireland and Scotland had manual transmissions, although automatic transmissions were available for a premium price. On our last visit to Scotland, the rental agent assumed that as Americans we would prefer an automatic transmission and repeatedly tried to up-sell us from the manual transmission vehicle that we reserved. I responded that "if we wanted to lease an automatic, I would have booked one in the first place." She finally gave up.

48 posted on 05/25/2026 8:41:40 AM PDT by Labyrinthos
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To: Labyrinthos

A few years ago I had a 25-year-old coworker who was going to travel to Spain for a couple of weeks. It would have cost her about $500 extra to rent a car with an automatic transmission. We spent about an hour in my Nissan Sentra teaching her the basics of manual transmission use, and she did fine on her trip.


51 posted on 05/25/2026 9:13:20 AM PDT by HartleyMBaldwin
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