With a manual gearbox you have slightly more control of the car  eg. on the approach to a corner you have a choice of what gear the car will be in and therefore wether you need to be braking or not depending on the gear choice. With an auto your only option is to brake and then allow the car to choose the gear, in wet and slippery conditions braking is not always appropriate and the gear the car chooses (unless you have a complicated electronic gearbox and other elecrtonic aids) may make things even worse. Autos are great in city if you have to stop and start a lot in the traffic, on the down side they are slightly more fuel hungry.

I've driven manuals and autos from cars to trucks.

I prefer manuals for control and fuel economy.

Merc 190 automatic jumps when switching gears...

And for that age and car type you probably save a lot of money if you go for a manual

Depends what you want. If you're an old fart like me that uses a car purely to get from A to B I would recommend an auto every time. I find this takes all the stress out of driving, especially with the crowded roads we have to put up with these days. Even after a trip of several hundred miles I reach my destination as fresh as a daisy instead of aching all over with a blinding headache. I've driven an auto for about 10 years & would never go back to manual from choice. Automatics were never as popular in Europe as in the US for some reason. I find there's a load of nonsense talked about them which seems to be a left-over from many years ago when they were expensive & unreliable. I've never had a single problem with mine.

Of course, this would all depend on the age of the car & what you can afford. I would have to agree with Ivan.
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I prefer a "stick", and definitely a cheaper price on most of those, but I will say the one thing I really like about auto trannies is that accelerating from a dead stop on a hill is much easier. My old Fiat Spider, even after I got used to the clutch, was a bit challenging in that situation, mostly because I was always trying to be very gentle with it...  it had no moxie at all in 1st gear, but starting off on a hill in 2nd was asking for trouble. Fortunately, it was very light so it wouldn't roll back very quickly.
And I got pretty good at sort of pivoting my foot so as to minimize the time going from brake to gas.
But it was all worth it for the downshifting control, and occasional double-clutching... God, I miss that little beast. 

I've driven some trucks that were much less fun in that situation: I used to hate it when I was driving a truck and some idiot would stop right on my bumper at a red light on a steep hill... I guess many people never notice that heavy trucks can lurch back quite a bit when starting up again on a hill...

However, there are newer manual-shift cars with a neat "hill holder" feature: I used to have a sweet little Subaru wagon that was set up so if you tapped the brake twice while stopping on a hill, it would stay put when you lifted your foot to hit the gas, and release the brake once you had torque going in 1st gear.

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I was thinking exactly the same thing. Oh well another gadget to sell.....

Crash

From someone who has probably driven more miles in reverse than most peeps on this forum have driven forwards ( I averaged 200,000 miles per year for several years), it's manual all the way for me.
The only comment to the contrary is that I haven't driven any of the current crop of modern gearboxes, so I can't comment on any of the new auto/semi-automatic choices. I've used most types of gearbox from the last 25 years including some that would make the average motorist sweat.

Stick to the manual gearbox. 

Pull the handbrake when you stop on a hill. When you want to drive off again, let the clutch come up until the car starts pulling, release the handbrake and apply some gas. Easiest way to drive away on a hill. No need for jumping from brake pedal to gaspedal.

Crash