Wha?

It is hard to say who is to blame here. Yesterday, with his wallet primed, Derek was ready to simulate the economy and drive away with a new car. He went shopping, for sports cars mind you, and could only find one with a manual transmission out of five different companies. Audi, Lexus, Infiniti, Acura, and BMW...all brands with high end, powerful engines, good torque and horsepower- and no real power because paired with an automatic tranny all the fun and experience is sucked out. He commented after his disappointing day that he had more fun driving home our 2002 Corolla (manual) than test driving a 330hp "manual paddle-shift" vehicle. All the expensive tech that is supposed to make these cars faster and more powerful is about as useful as nipples on a breastplate if you can't control the timing of the shift. I mean being in fifth gear going 40? At least give us a taste, even proximity of red on the rpms so we know we're driving a mean, well engineered machine- not a economy starter car. So back to the beginning, whose fault is it?` Do we blame the dealers for this? If they can't sell a manual as they claimed then I can only throw my righteous indignation at the driving populace. Are we too busy eating, texting, and watching movies to be more involved in operating our vehicles? Is it too difficult of a skill to learn? Is this indicative of our laziness? Really people!? I propose we all learn to drive stick first to get a license, then have the choice to downgrade to an automatic. I think it would increase awareness on the road in general. Another pleasant outcome would be that we could find more than one manual transmission car in the frakin state!