Are you a stick man or an auto fan? Are you a lady who would prefer to drive down Route 120 in McHenry manually shifting the transmission, or do you want the car to do all the work?

If McHenry is representative of the nation as a whole, approximately 13% of cars sold leave the showroom with manual transmissions. That means 87% drive onto the road with transmissions that do most of the work in terms of shifting gears. It’s generally a matter of a personal preference. 

While a majority of drivers want a transmission they can engage and forget, some are staunch adherents to the world of manually shifting the transmission.

Chloe, a resident of McHenry County, said, “I prefer automatic because I don’t have to think about it. But I know how to drive a stick. It’s just been a long time.”

Ken, another McHenry County resident, however, is firmly on the other side of the fence: “I am wildly a stick man. I have owned nothing but stick shift cars for more than 40 years. In fact, I have only owned one car with an automatic transmission and that was my first car.

He explained the reason he prefers a stick as “Simply, the pleasure I take from driving more intimately with the car.”

He also said that standard transmissions are more reliable and, traditionally, less expensive.

An article in moneyunder30 agrees. The article points out that “Manuals are $800-$1,000 cheaper than their automatic twins.”

From moneyunder30, we also find an article that proclaims “A 10-year-old manual is more efficient than a 10-year-old automatic. Along with the initial differentiation of purchasing a car with a manual transmission over a car with an automatic, the article points out that, “Because manuals are all mechanics, you only must figure out which component needs replacing or fixing.”

As the article goes on to explain, with an automatic, “… you first have to make sure the component that needs replacing matches the software installed in that particular vehicle.”

This illuminates a repair cost difference between automatic transmission from a generation ago and those in cars now. Newer automatic transmissions have more components that operate in conjunction with software in the vehicle.

When it comes to driving through a McHenry winter, Chloe said, “I’m also glad that I don’t have to drive sticks here in Illinois and its icy conditions.”

But Ken disagreed. He feels that a manual transmission is better in the snow. In the snow, he said, “I have more control over how much I’m leaning on the traction. In other words, I’m better at getting out of a low-traction situation with a stick. And you can kill an automatic trying to rock your way out of the snow.”

What are your thoughts?

Automatic?

Or

Manual?