A manual transmission is basically where you don't have the vehicle changing gears for you. In that case, you have to do it yourself, but there are some people who prefer it that way. Anyway, though, I haven't heard much about these types of cars lately. In fact, I think I was a kid (or maybe teenager) when I last rode such a vehicle. However, though, I don't think they've disappeared and I'm wondering about good deals on such vehicles.
Manual transmission is economical compared to automatic transmission since you change gears according to requirement but auto-transmission keeps engine in lower gears especially during heavier traffic. In other words where you can go in 3rd gear auto-transmission keeps your engine in 2nd which increase consumption of oil. We in our parts of the world are used to cars with manual transmission economically price-wise and oil consumption is also low.
@Ray1 I agree with you that manual cars are more fuel efficient than automatic cars. This efficiency, besides what you have said, is also because a manual car's engine is less complex and weighs much less. In fact if we could dig into the figures, manual cars help save between 5% and 15% on fuel consumption. @Jason76 I don't think that manual cars have entirely disappeared from sight, though I think it would be very hard to find a good deal on one, especially the small ones. Those that have them are not willing to sell and those that are willing, are selling them like vintage cars. However, most heavy duty vehicles such as those used on off-road missions for example the Land Cruiser, would be easier to find.
@NicholasMukuha 90% cars manufactured in our country are manually operated and you would be surprised to note out of 24 million cars were produced last year less than 5% were automatic. That means almost 23 million of total production of automobiles was manual which is a good number by any means. People in our parts of the world still prefer manual cars due different reasons.
Well this is on my list of things to learn that I have just passed over and over again, and here I am wishing that I had done it already. I have always had a manual and no real need to learn, but still something makes me think that I need to know this.
I agree with @Ray1 that manual transmission is economical compared to the automatic cars. That is the main reason why over here, majority of vehicles are manual transmission. Our first car was also a manual transmission. When we sold it in 2013, we bought an automatic car and another for my wife. That means we now have 2 cars, both automatic. Despite the costly gas consumption of automatic, it saves us a lot of stress with the usual heavy traffic on the road. You can imagine the pain of shifting the gears and stepping on the clutch pedal only to move a few feet. Do that for more than an hour and you would probably change your car to automatic.
@Alexandoy Currently we have two automatic cars here since the traffic conditions are far better than what they are back in my country so we do not feel like we are wasting on gas. The automatic transmission works best in ideal driving conditions and if you do that in traffic conditions like ours cost of extra gas would be like more stressful than saving the stress of shifting the gears lol.
