hey, calling my (ex) JEEP a fake? grr.....
I wish my dad decided to get a stick trasmission put in when my sister blew the engine, that was a sad day
but it survived, it even did battle against my friend's Monte Carlo and faced an evil fake brand new truck, a surburban and won , little dent to jeep and jacked up front end to the Burb'  , not to be proud of my misadventures but how Jeeps are tougher than toe nails 

on a regular car, and especially a sports/high proformance car i would agree that it is a fake expiriance

for a new truck or an suv it is almost impossible to find a standard transmition

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I agree with you, but the driving school I went to, should choose more wisely in their choice of stick shift cars, they decided to buy a Mitsubishi 3000GT, a 2 seat sports car for those without the money for a Corvette, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Vipers......etc

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bah to the jeep with an auto tranny statement

I don't think you'd want a truck with an automatic tranny, unless they have some sort of over ride for it, image going down hill with the rig fully loaded and you ride the brakes because you cant engine brake...ehhh wouldn't have brakes too long

whenever I tried to get that thing moving smoothly, I thought I was going to launch it straight into the vehicle ahead

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An automatic transmission & 44t behind you is a death warrant!

Besides, manual transmissions are vastly tougher than the auto's and tend to outlive by a ratio of 3 to 1 ! (My local bus company uses automatic Scanias, they frequently blow transmission's something you just don't do with a conventional box (despite split & half-split gearing!)

A few years back, I owned a rather battered 2.9litre 24Valve Cosworth engine powered Ford Granada/Scorpio, it was very quick and scary into bends unless you used the transmission as a "clutchless manual" - this great idea lasted about 3 months into my ownership of the car and it duly blew up the gearbox....

£300 (including fitting) followed by £300(!) to re-map the engine management system correctly to deal with a manual transmission (the car was never built with a manual box, thus fuelling was wrong etc) resulted in a vastly quicker car better fuel consuption and above all else, strong engine braking when entering corners.

Short of losing a leg, I'll never buy another auto as long as I hold my licence.

Anyway, manual transmissions are a doddle once you learn not to use the clutch.

Paul.

no,don't do that,craig. if you don't learn to drive with manual transmission now,you'll never learn it.
i for myself am happy to drive a car with manual transmission,since it keeps you busy instead of just accelerating and braking. how boring.

a hint: grab your mom and her car on a sunday and let her drive you to a parking area (in front of a big supermarket or so). you change seats there and now you can practice shifting or other things that you need to improve.