This but unironically.
As someone that literally spent 25 years driving a manual, including various stints in racing. Manuals have seen their day.
It used to be if you wanted better mileage, you drove a manual. If you wanted to be faster on the track, drive a manual (caveat there is drag racing.)
Today? The computer is just better at controlling a transmission. I drive a Camry Hybrid now and not having shifts is REALLY weird and the drone getting up to highway speeds is annoying, but I do like the 45mpg. Not to mention, when I sat down to learn how the Toyota Hybrid Drive works… It’s a pretty clever system.
There are a lot of times that nostalgia gets the better of me and I wish I had a car with a manual. My oldest is possibly joining a skating team that is a 2 hour drive away. It’s tempting to let him use my car and then buy an older manual for myself as a toy. I’d love to get a hold of another mid-80’s Corolla GT-S. I autocrossed one back in the late 80’s early 90’s. It still remains my favorite car I’ve ever owned.
Same here . Obviously it does feel more like actually driving a car instead of a toy but to be honest, electric is here and they don’t shift. Today when i feel like doing some driving for the sake of driving- a motorcycle is much more fun anyway.
Manuals are infinitely more fun to drive and I like to manipulate the performance characteristics of the car myself but they’re probably going extinct to EV which is fine.
Not just EVs, modern beltless CVTs and automatic transmissions make manual transmissions practically obsolete. With a wider set of gear ranges and way better performance and reliability they’re better in almost every way than a stick shift. That said, doesn’t matter how good a transmission is if it’s undersized for the engine, so I’m not say the transmission in any particular vehicle is good, just the tech has developed in recent years
those transmissions are only better on paper. sure they could be theoretically better but in practice the transmission programming is to way over aggressively upshift in order to miser out a little more fuel economy on paper (but in practice they waste fuel)
True, and as someone who’s been driving the same stick shift for almost 15 years now, you can take it from my cold dead hands. I haven’t seen anything with a beltless cvt, and I haven’t seen an automatic transmission I like more than my five speed, except in traffic. The tech exists, although it’s not available.
Waste fuel, and they don’t always do what you want them to do, or sometimes lag before they do it.
All hail the Unimog!
Biblically accurate transmission
“How many hydraulic levers you need?”
“All of them”
“How many hydraulic-driven pieces of equipment does your rig have?”
“Mind your own business”
you aren’t supposed to show people what the control panel to the mcflurry machine looks like
Manual is hell for people with back or knee issues.
Clutches are for the weak. Grind em till you find em.
Person with back and knee issues here: worth it to not have to deal with a slushbox that won’t downshift when I need it to. I’ll never give up my manual.
Eh, automatic cars will let you go into “manual” mode in which you tell it when to switch the gears. Mildly useful for steep hills to stop it from switching back and forth in some rare scenarios.
Not every automatic has that. Not to mention that there tends to be input lag when you hit the paddle, and there’s the fact that they won’t hold a gear when you need them to (instead they tend to automatically upshift right before redline). Manual mode is no substitute for a real manual.
Even the oldest automatics would let you lock it to a lower gear if you needed it.
Just curious, what kind of terrain did you encounter that seem to cause such issues with wrongly shifting gears?
Flat asphalt.
Like for example when you need to accelerate quickly to get around/avoid something. Most automatics I’ve driven will often shift into second too soon unless you drive aggressively, and absolutely refuse to drop back down to first gear—no matter how hard you stomp the accelerator pedal—even if there’s still plenty of room left in the rev range.
You can usually change the driving mode from eco over comfort to sport. They all behave differently. And the there’s the kick down, that’ll definitely shift down unless the revs would be too high.
I love driving manual, have done it since I was 18. But automatic transmissions nowadays are really good.
The only ones I’ve driven will not shift when you kick the gas pedal down, precisely to let you accelerate faster.
Yeah I’ve got regular back and ankle issues. It’s annoying when they flare up but really not that bad. Unfortunately manuals are harder and harder to find so this will likely be my last
We should also get rid of starter motors. Who needs them? We can just hand crank the car to start it, like real men did back in the day.
I love when it backfires and accidentally breaks your arm! So manly!!!
PUT IT IN “H”
What country is this car from?
She’ll go 300 hectares on a single tank of kerosene.
During Covid, I put together a budget sim rig. Played a looooot of VR Assetto Corsa. Learned to drive a manual, then went and did a manual Porsche race car on a track in Vegas. It worked! It was one of the best things I’ve ever done. I was flushed when I got out of the car. It was overwhelming.
Anyway, I was ready. So I took the natural next step. I bought a manual 1984 Ford F-250 with a ~7L (7.4L?) engine, dual gas tanks that held more fuel than I could ever afford. It was a beast. Long story short, I was not ready. Oh, did I mention I lived in mountainous Utah at the base of said mountains at the time?
Yeah pre year ~2000 cars are a bit different lmao
You’ll never catch me doing something that can be automated away, this includes shifting gears in a car.
But a car is just a tool to me, like a cordless drill, so i’m sure I don’t get it.
As a programmer, I am more than happy automating a task for which I will never recoup my automation time investment.
It’s the principle of the thing.
as a senior programmer (with limited, valuable time), i exercise good judgement before wasting weeks on unused automations.
“measure twice, cut once” as the craftsmen used to say. or YAGNI
It’s not like you can use that time freed by automating gear shifting for something else.
It’s a tool, yes, but personally, I like having more control over tools I use. I’d choose a cordless drill that I can set the torque control myself over one that doesn’t have that option.
It doesn’t free up time no but it does make driving ever so slightly less involved.
Controls on a drill have a clear practical purpose, and to my knowledge they don’t make them that do that automatically in a reasonable price range. I would totally buy that if they did. ;-)
and by making driving less involved, we free up drivers to play on their phones while going 70mph down the highway. progress!
Yeah. People in a manual definately don’t ever do that.
I totally understand people who like the whole ritual of the manual car. Hell, that’s how I feel about music making. But there’s something to be said for just getting something to happen without much effort.
Just because you need to learn something additional does not mean driving a manual requires more effort in any substantial way. Its more effort than 0, but it is not taxing or hard to drive a manual when you are used to it. I do not think about pushing the clutch in or shifting, I just do it.
I will say dont ever drive a manual if you will be in stop and go traffic for long periods of time regularly though. Im personally never in it.
Pretty much every consumer in every auto market agrees with you. There are downsides to manual, you can grind a transmission’s gears to dust in a couple of days if you do it wrong, you really can’t trust someone to drive your car at all, you are much more actively driving, so you’re paying more attention, but you’re also more stressed, if you’re in bumper to bumper traffic, you will have to do the most difficult aspects of driving every few seconds to inch along for a half hour or more and that’s REALLY shitty, if you need to stop on any kind of hill, you have to be aware your gonna need half a car length or more to get into gear where your just going to be falling down that hill while you convince yourself you don’t need to panic and you will catch the gear before you’re past the point of no return. You get better mileage, you get better control, you pay attention more, you focus more, but it’s not all roses, the risks usually aren’t worth it for modern car buyers.
your gonna need half a car length or more to get into gear
my arsehole just clenched tight for any car you’ve ever driven. eugh. you let a car fall back half a car length before the biting point? that’s literally a ton of pressure on it. you’re way better off giving too much gas and too little clutch than letting the car fall half a length backwards bro. the former will perhaps stress your clutch slightly but it won’t fuck with your gears like the latter
like a chinese burn vs a broken bone
I mostly drove manual in a very mountainous geography.
Soo… that means you had room behind your car, so you we’re never forced to learn how to do it without letting the car move.
Try an uphill start with shitty winter tires in traffic when the car barely stays still with your brakes on while you’re stopped at a 30 degree incline in lights.
You learn that it’s better to slightly antagonise the clutch (we call it “pissing” the clutch, but “bullshitting” would be a more accurate translation as per the meaning of “kusettaa”.) So youre sort of “cheating”, but what you can’t do is let the car move backwards.
Not only does it make it way worse for the gearbox, it also ruins your chances at having traction in a scenario such as I described.
In Finland you literally have to spend a day on slippery course before getting your permanent licence. It’s ice and water in the winter and oil and soap in the summer. And there too, the instructors may be like, “hey stop here on this uphill.”
Also, whenever doing conscription and driving military trucks in a convoy, you really can’t let the vehicle fall half a length.
That’s just bad driving.
I’m sure you’re a good manual driver… for an American.
Starting on a slope isn’t particularly hard, you have to make use of the handbrake
somebody failed to read the meme i guess, it’s literally right there
Not saying you’re wrong in general but
if you need to stop on any kind of hill, you have to be aware your gonna need half a car length or more to get into gear where your just going to be falling down that hill while you convince yourself you don’t need to panic and you will catch the gear before you’re past the point of no return
My shitty Toyota Aygo has a hill start assist thing and it works very well. Basically when you release the brake at 0 km/h it holds it for a few seconds or until you reach the slip point of your first gear. Also handbrake start is right there in the OP, (and a mandatory part of drivers ed over here)
Electric cars have no transmission. If you buy electric, there are no stick shifts because electric cars only have one gear (with very few exceptions, and even then you’d just have 2 gears.)
Idk how this plays into the joke, but it’s a neat fact.
Technically they have at least 2 “gears”, forward and reverse. But does it really count if all you do is shout at the angry pixies to run the other way?
As a classically trained driver I’ve found automatics make people drive worse because they have to think less. And they already barely think.
Manual occupies their phone hand. How is someone supposed to heart content so the algorithm gives them more of it!
Using the PRiNDle opens one up for so many activities.
using the PRiNDle
Stupid is as stupid does. A significant portion of trucking accidents involve the truck driver missing a cue because they were mid gear change.
While it is good to have a person learn to drive stick, it is really hard to get people to learn how to drive if they have zero interest in actually learning how to be a driver, no matter what transmission.
I personally like dual clutch transmissions and daily’ed a car to 175k miles with one, yet I went out of my way to find a manual version of my current car.
What the fuck is a “classically trained driver”?
He was taught by the same institute that taught Beethoven to drift.
Grand staff drifting
Wow, was that playable?
To Beethoven and no one else probably
Didn’t go to one of those lousy postmodern driving schools I think
Like Robert Wells or Bill Nye.
like going to a prestigious school for drivers? julihart for driving?
Mom took him to a big office building parking lot on a Sunday when it was quiet. At least that’s how this classically trained driver learned.
I’ve actually observed the opposite. Automatics leave more brain cells to focus on traffic.
“Self driving” cars on the other hand…
They use them to focus on their phones, not the road
That’s just a type of driver though. They come in all transmissions.
Do you sing an aria by Mozart or something when you drive? But anyway, in my experience driving manual makes people more distracted because they have to think about gears and the clutch and stuff. Sure, a competent driver will not have any difficulty with that, but there’s an awful lot of them out there that don’t quite fall into that category.
You must not know how to drive a manual. When you know how to drive one, you don’t think about it. You just do it. You feel connected to the car and connected to the act of driving. Automatics absolutely allow people to go on autopilot and they focus on anything but driving: stuffing their face with food, browsing lemmy, texting, talking on their phone on speaker while holding it up to their mouth for some fucking reason even though it would be easier and better sound quality to just hold it up to their ear like phones were designed to be used, or you know, just use the fucking hands free phone calling that’s built into every fucking car that was made in the last decade and a half and included in every cheap ass aftermarket stereo system available on the planet
I’ve driven manual for over 30 years. Back in the day automatic transmissions were slow, clunky and inefficient. When I first tried modern one, I was instantly converted. Like, I also don’t want to manually adjust rotation speed on my washing machine, why would I do it in the car? Driving electric takes it to a whole new level. It just frees up mind share for concentrating on traffic. There’s no guarantee people will actually do that, of course. And if you think that things that are subconscious don’t take up mind share, you don’t know much about how the brain works. And if you think drivers on manual are less distracted, I have news for you too. I guess you live in the US, where driving manual is a choice. Here it’s mainly in cheaper, older cars which are driven by people who don’t much care about cars or driving.
You’re wrong
No I let my exhaust do the singing. It’s like playing a really simple pipe organ.
Now think about how much worse they would drive if they had to switch their concentration from the road to the transmission.
Only just noticed Your username. For a moment I thought You were serious.
If I was serious I’d say no human is sane enough to drive.
I mean, I’ve driven only automatics my whole life, with the odd exception of a friend’s ATV or whatnot, but I know when and how to use an e brake (and/or dual foot the brake pedal and gas pedal) to start a car on an incline, when said car has an automatic transmission…
EDIT: Also, most automatics will let you attempt a rolling start in neutral… I’ve done this many times, either rolling downhill or having people push.
You’re not gonna uninvent automatic transmissions.
Assuming you’re American (I doubt a non American would name themselves ‘Boomer Humor’), what you could do is mandate people completely retest, written and driving tests, for their liscenses every 5 years, then every 2 years after some age cutoff (60? 65?) then every single year after another age cutoff (70? 75?)… instead of just assuming that because they passed the test once in their life, all their skills and knowledge are perfect and up to date for the rest of their lives.
Most people think they are much better drivers than they actually are, so lets actually reality check them on that.
I would be so happy if we had stringent driving tests like in Europe. Hell, I’d gladly be re-tested every year if it meant people knew which lane to use and what turn signals were for.
Honestly, thats great to hear.
American car-centric culture is literally directly killing people, killing the environment, killing our ability to design cities and public transit…
You’d think the least we could do is be competent at driving.
But fucking nope, not a chance.
I used to live in Seattle.
Almost no one understands that in significant rain, you need to double your following distance.
Still fucking baffles me to this day. Rain City people don’t know how to drive… in the rain.
A big reason why I’m all for public transport is to get people off the road who shouldn’t be there in the first place so they’re out of my way when I’m driving.
Kind of like how I support new urbanism because it means less wilderness plowed under for suburbs, so I have more native habitat. I don’t want to live in a city, I just want most people to live in them so I can ve alone with my woodland friends.
“… get people off the road who shouldn’t be there in the first place…”
i get the sentiment but i think this is problematic.
who deserves the right to drive then?
i hear you, “people who are capable”. but real life isn’t so cut and dry. the way it works in america now is awful fs, you can back this up with death statistics fairly easily; however, i think this tribalistic “us vs them” attitude drivers get is emblematic of deeper problems in our culture.
everyone is all for the animal farm until they’re the other. cliche, i know, but it’s true.
Driving isn’t a right, it’s a privilege. And we determine who can drive by testing them to see if they know and will follow the rules.
Plus the old dude I saw today with shaking hands and an oxygen tube in his nose deserves to have an alternative where he won’t kill himself or others.
oh yeah, it’s surely a privilege to be allowed to participate in society.
the argument “driving isn’t a right, it’s a privilege” falls entirely flat on its face when there exist no alternatives for a large majority of people and their lives. hardcore boomer energy that blatantly ignores the reality on the ground.
i agree, there are people who shouldn’t drive. i wish i didn’t have to drive.
that simply isn’t feasible in the current reality, tho.
driving can once again be a privilege only after it returns to no longer being a necessity. it is the natural right of all peoples to participate in their society. i agree with the sentiment, driving is a privilege that should be earned. but we should do ground work to make that true, we can’t just ignore the real world and indignantly say whatever we feel like; real life isn’t harry potter and the symbols and words we create bare no direct power over reality. driving is not a privilege in todays america, you don’t get to be the arbiter of decision here. in a practical sense, driving is necessary. the right to transportation and movement evolves with the age, man; it doesn’t get narrower as time goes on in the way a lot of western law seems to want to imply nowadays.
Death statistics?
https://everytownresearch.org/graph/gun-death-vs-motor-vehicle-accident-deaths-since-1999/
This source doesn’t go up to 2024, but only fairly recently have guns killed more Americans than cars, each year, and the overall numbers aren’t too far off.
Cars certainly cause far more property damage than guns.
Anyone in a car is easily capable of killing another human being or doing them massive injury.
I agree with you that there are many more pervasive and complex issues … driving (sorry) Americans to be dangerous irresponsible drivers…
But cars are deadly weapons, whether driven as such intentionally or unintentionally.
Maybe people should be more stringently screened and qualified before they are allowed and trusted to regularly use them.
For the record, I think you shouldn’t be able to own a firearm without having gone through a certification course, but as it stands right now, only 10 US states require that.
https://everytownresearch.org/rankings/law/training-required-to-purchase-guns/
All states require you complete a certification for concealed carry… but you don’t need that to legally buy and possess a gun.
Yeah, and all the morons from the Midwest stick their thumbs in their belt loops and insist that they really know how to drive in the snow, don’cha know, not like you coastal people.
And yet there isn’t a single guardrail anywhere in Minnesota that hasn’t got a Chevy Suburban shoved halfway through it.
That would be especially funny coming from a Minnesotan aimed at … at least myself, as a Seattleite.
For starters: It almost never seriously snows in Seattle, so we don’t have anywhere near as good an infrastructure for clearing snow.
Not saying the average Seattleite is adept at snow driving… but… Seattle has A LOT of steep hills.
I’m reasonably confident Minnesota is as flat as a pancake in comparison.
(Checked. MN’s tallest ‘mountain’ is 2300 feet. WA’s is 14,000. Their ‘mountain’ is unironically what I would call a big hill. WA has almost 150 mountains taller than 2000 feet, by relative geographical prominence, not absolute height)
A fairly small amount of snow, especially if it can be cold long enough to freeze into ice, and you’re looking at something like 30 to 40% of Seattle’s roads being either insanely dangerous, or roads that are cutoff by said chokepoints.
I’m talking 18% to 22% grade.
Apparently the steepest road in Minneapolis is ‘nearly’ 15%.
-.-
That is why a foot of snow basically shuts down Seattle.
Now… going further…
If you live in the PNW and actually try to see all the sights… aka, leave Seattle…
Well you hit the fucking Cascade mountains, where it often snows considerably, the foothills have tons of smaller cities and rural communities with garbage tier snaking roads of extreme grade, and on the east side of the state, they get massive snow dumps all the time, though it is much more flat.
So if you’ve actually driven or lived around a good deal of WA… you’ve probably had to encounter a lot more difficult snow conditions than an average MidWest driver.
I’ve driven through Snoqualmie Pass in the snow. Much of Wyoming, also. Yeah, midwesterners have no concept. They just think they do.
It’s been difficult to find manual transmisssions for a couple of decades here in the US. That ship has sailed.
While most of my life I vowed my kids would learn manual, I gave up on that idea because
- manual transmission cars are rare and disappearing
- automatics now are more fuel efficient
- CVT are reliable and even more efficient
- EVs don’t shift
My kids started driving in a world of automatics and will soon be in a world with no transmissions
cvts are reliable
Now THAT’S a statement made by the utterly deranged
If they aren’t made by Nissan, they are.
Subaru
https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2023/MC-10231303-0001.pdfHonda
https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2023/MC-10236086-0001.pdfGM
https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2020/MC-10213745-9999.pdfMitsubishi
https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2024/MC-10252683-0001.pdfChrysler uses the Nissan trans and they are king of the shit heap.
I think he is confusing CVT with the toyota eCVT which is quite different and is actually reliable
The Prius system is a modern marvel and deserves a better name than eCVT.
Belt type CVTs are trash. I don’t care that your Subaru has 57,000 trouble free miles, it’s going to die.
Belt CVTs - I’m right there with you, but take a look into the more modern geared CVTs such as Toyota e-CVT in their hybrids - I think Honda have a similar tech. It’s a planetary gear system that provides infinite gears without the rubber band feel that plagued belt CVTs and hella-reliable.
https://youtu.be/vHc-_E8xWnM?si=tzCJWXHmC9T5GCpx
I’m a petrolhead at heart and would love more options for manuals but in lieu of that, a geared CVT is by far the next best transmission and 100x better than a traditional auto.
Even better, jump in one and take it for a drive - because there are gears, it feels more connected to the motor - almost manual-like response and no sluggish delay like a traditional auto.
You literally pick your revs by pushing the throttle more or less, they’re magic for hills or when the car is packed since you’re never waiting for revs to climb up into the power nor holding a speed because any faster and you have to change again which takes you out of the power again. If you want more power, you simply modulate that with the throttle and the revs rise instantly to accommodate.
CVTs are good for tractors that need a wide range of torque ratios but still stay automated.
They’re good for go karts and for auto manufacturers that want their product to be worthless about time you pay it off.
I’ve had a Subaru CVT for 10+ years with over 200k miles no issues. Anecdotal yes, but I’ve grown fond of the CVT feel, it’s smooth, I like it.
EVs don’t shift
I know there’s no reason for them to, but a small part of me wishes there was. Something so satisfying about being good at managing gears
There are simulated transmissions for the weirdos.
I’m not that into the idea, and the simulation kind of ruins what I’m after anyway. I want to feel it when I get a good/bad shift and I want it to matter.
Sure, you can simulate the engine rumbling and the gears grinding. You can even rock the boat a bit with some hydraulics. When I shift “wrong” you can make me feel it for sure. But when I shift right, it’s not just smooth so that you can’t feel it. It’s smooth so that you can feel it ya know? (Okay maybe it wasn’t that smooth and what you’re really feeling is a slight clutch dump but wasn’t it fun)
I feel this post in my old bones.
So true. I’ve never been more tempted to keep a classic car, even if it’s just an old shit box with manual transmission.
I seem to recall some EV having a 2 speed transmission. A modern one, not like the Electrek that had a 5 speed manual
When I learned how to drive, manual transmissions were higher performance and better fuel efficiency: side by side comparisons of the exact same model of car would show better 0-60 and quarter mile times, while having slightly better EPA fuel efficiency ratings, for the manual transmission.
At some point, though, the sheer number of gears in an automatic transmission surpassed those in the typical manual gearbox, and the average automatic today has 6 gears, up to 9 in some Mercedes and 10 in certain Ford and GM models. So they could start selecting gear ratios for better fuel efficiency, without “wasting” a valuable gear slot. There was a generation of Corvettes that was notorious for having a 6th gear that was worthless for actual performance but helped the car sneak by with a better highway fuel mileage rating.
And the automatics became much faster at shifting gears, with even the ultra high performance supercars shifting to paddle shifters where the driver could still control the gear, but with the shifting mechanism automated. Ferrari’s paddle shifter models started outperforming the traditional stick shift models in the early 2000’s, if I remember correctly. As those gear shifting technologies migrated over to regular automatics, the performance gap shrunk and then ended up going the other way.
At this point there’s not enough reason for a true manual stickshift transmission. It’s no longer faster or more economic, so it’s just a pure fun. Which is fine, but does make it hard to actually design one for any given model of car.
In the US it’s not really even cheaper - as in maybe you could save a couple hundred on a few models but most won’t offer a choice and it’s nothing in proportion to the cost of the car and the chances of finding one are so small it’s not even worth trying for most cars. There may be a few - are jeeps still available?
My favorite car was a Miata with a stick (even though I’m too tall to fit) - maybe I need to track down an older one before they’re gone forever
Isn’t the civic si series all manual?
The Si and the R! They both sell like hotcakes, waited 8 months for my 2024 Si. I’m not sure why Honda doesn’t increase the volume, there’s still a lot of demand - maybe the margins aren’t as good as their SUVs :(
Wow I had no idea, that’s crazy. I went with the 2024 sport touring because I do city driving 90% of the time, but that Si looked NICE
I bought a civic in 2006 and it took 6 weeks to get one. A manual would have taken much longer
Had a manual 2016 Mazda 3. Took a bit to find it with all the options I wanted but it was available at the time.
Funnily enough, I have a few friends who really think like this. Personally, having driven manual for 20 years before I switched to electric a year ago, I don’t see it, apart from a certain comfortable nostalgia. Automatic is better in cities and it’s a lot easier for kids to learn. Handbrake starts on hills? What a weird thing to be nostalgic about.
I suspect it’s just these people think handling the gearstick makes them special. It’s the one thing they can be smug about,completely discounting the fact that any old idiot can learn to drive manual if they just practice a bit. Reminds me of my grandpa who insisted that it’s better to chop down trees with an axe and a handsaw, instead of using these modern chainsaws. He was a stubborn old dude.
Good insight, it really is basically “if you get rid of this, then I won’t be good at anything”
I still hate to this day one of my parents cars. The gear shift is on the side of the radio and the radio controls(what isn’t touch screen) are underneath.
What the hell is this design.
Bringing back the classics! Great-grandad had one, he’d be right at home.
I had a Rambler Ambassador that came with push-button shifting on the dash!
Bruh, that’s almost worse than Tesla
You’re like a solid 20 years behind here bud, they don’t even offer manual transmissions on high end luxury cars. People don’t buy them. I get it, I miss having manual cars, and it’s not as hard as people always complained, I could teach a dog to drive manual over the phone, it’s really not hard.
That’s not true. Honda selled more manual than automatic cars in the past year.
they don’t even offer manual transmissions on high end luxury cars
Honda
Hmm.
No they have a pretty solid point here, the expensive Honda are selling majority manual, the budget friendly Honda sell close to zero, but you can often only get manual on those models by paying for multiple upgrades that push the price so close to the more expensive models you would clearly just move up.
There are plenty of cars offering manual transmission, its just not available for every CSR out there. If you want to have fun with it you can.