Fuel economy is not, actually, my primary reason for preferring a manual transmission -- I am, after all, Canadian, and thus spared the burden of British or European fuel prices. But, as is also traditional in a Canadian, I am stingy, unwilling to pay the thousand bucks an automatic gearbox adds to the price of a car, and unable to bring myself to pay the whopping bills that come -- as the night followeth the day -- when one must repair or replace the damnable thing.

And yeah, you do get better fuel economy. That's a nice bonus.

The automatic transmission is so pervasive here that the majority of drivers can't manage a clutch at all, and are therefore severely limited when they travel, or find themselves in an emergency involving a vehicle with a manual transmission. This has happened to me; when we needed a tow to get us out of an icy driveway, the tow-truck driver slipped and wrenched his knee so badly that he could not stand, let alone complete the task. We called an ambulance, but the tow-truck blocked the narrow road. The only person on the scene (by this point, cluttered with cops and ambulance men) who could drive the tow-truck was the plump, middle-aged lady editor -- me. So I did.