Neither of my cars have synchros on the first gear...

Anyway I think I have driven two cars with automatic transmission.
A Volvo V70, it was ok I guess. A Volvo 240, it was the slowest thing ever!

I prefer manuall, as Chris40 said "you are much more in touch with the machine", I couldn't agree more.

In Germany it's possible to make the driver's license with an automatic-car, but then you aren't allowed to drive a manual one later.
A driver's license only for automatic is something for handicapped people - or for idiots. This is the reputation of it in fact.

A car with manual is much better to handle and to drive on bad roads, offroad or in the wintertime. And in mountains, for sure.
To continue atom and Chris40: you're much more in touch with the ground, too.

Last year I taught a 16-year-old neighbor to drive. We used her Dad's Toyota 4-speed manual pick-up truck. It took only 2-3 lessons for her to get the hang of the clutch and accelerator techniques. That girl can now "drive". Her brother is next, this Fall. I think there should be TWO classes of drivers' licenses in N. America: one for bumper-car level "drivers", i.e. people who can only "start, steer, stop", and another for people who can actually "drive" ... (and that includes the ability to parallel park with 4" in front and in back!
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Ahh, the joys of double de-clutching the 50s Land Rover around the yard at work.

I know how to drive one but so far I have only driven my grandfather's old 1988 Yugo GVL

My Neon is manual = I hate it

As a couple of you already know, I am currently taking driver's training and I have been learning to drive in just the past few weeks. I've "officially" driven three times so far with my driving instructor. It has been on an automatic of course, as with all new drivers (well, in the US anyway).
But the other day, just for kicks I tried out driving our stick-shift Honda and, ooooh it was not a pretty sight! I must have stalled it at least a dozen times, and at one intersection I burned so much rubber you could smell it from a block away. It turned out that I had been in third gear when I should have been in first, so the car repeatedly lurched forward violently, leaving skid marks on the pavement. Finally my dad made me stop driving, because he feared that if I drove for any longer I might burn out the clutch and destroy the transmission.
All I can say is I'm NEVER going to own a stick shift car. I don't know how you Europeans can put up with those horrible things! They're so aggravating!

I'd like to have an automatic too, i think ive said it a thousand times, but once you learn how to drive a manual you just do it and its not hard to do, by the way i dont think you made any burnout on third, you rather stalled the car, anyway if i was you i would have learnt how to drive a manual, although im in not in love with it for the moment i am very glad i can drive a manual, which is the hard thing... to say that you can only drive automatics is quite poor...

Not here it isn't
No one knows how to drive a stick here, especially young people.

I know, but , as i said, and since you are a car fan you could have learnt how to drive a manual, but well, perhaps in a country in where youll hardly ever drive one its a bit pointless indeed...

Automatic cars can make you feel sick. Quite often it's an ugly feeling, when the automatic transmission is turning in the next position. This little jerking can cause sickness and makes you throw up.

And it nerves, that you always have to push on the brakes, again and again. Expecially it nerves, when you have an automatic car in front of you in thicker traffic.
With a stick-shift-car, you don't need the brake often. It's much more comfortable to gear down and let the car slow down. and it saves fuel, too.

I'm driving 130 km per day to my work and back, mostly on the Autobahn. Especially in the early morning, when I'm going to work, and when all steets are quite empty (not often, here in the Ruhr-area), I'm doing the trip without any use of the brake. This is possible. You just let the car roll out to be slower and gear down.

Some years ago, I've picked up with a friend a car in Southern Germany (a K 70, what else?) Just after the start I've seen, that the brakes are defect. I would have been too much pissed to let the car there and come back later, so I've decided "fuck it, let's go"
So I drove 400 km across half Germany without using the brakes. O.k., it was on Saturday evening with lower traffic, but it has worked without any problems. Big distance to the cars in front of you, shifting down and using the handbrake, that was enough.

Nowadays it's easier to drive stick-shift-cars. In the ancient past, when the gearboxes weren't synchronized, you had the make the "double-declutch" ("Zwischengas" in German) by choosing annother gear.
It works so:
1.pushing the clutch
2.put out the gear
3.let the clutch back
4.short push on the gas without a gear
5.pushing the clutch again
6.put the other gear in
7.let the clutch back.

Quite tricky it's with that truck:
http://imcdb.org/vehicle_125484-MAN-630-L2AE.html
It has the "wanker-gearshift". You have to lift the stick shift up and down for getting the next gears.

I use that technic nearly all the time when choosing a lower gear, it works better even if the gearbox can handle it without that.

But usually you cannot destroy a gearbox, when you don't do that.

Sometimes I'm irritating passengers, when I'm pushing the stick-shift a bit more powerful in its position. The simple result is, that I'm a K 70-driver since nearly 18 years, and the gearbox of the K 70 is a typical NSU-construction, with the NSU-typical jamming gear-shift, especially for the 2nd gear. So a long-time NSU-driver uses a bit more power to choose the gear.
This is no problem, because the gearbox knows it. I never had a broken gearbox in my several K 70 or my NSU 1200 - even if I always shift violently.

The most horrible experience I had with a quite gone 300 000 km-VW T3-Transporter, I as a loan for a weekend from annother guy. It's gearbox was nearly totally gone (it was also changed and not original). during that trip I got several aggressivity-attacks, so I crashed the gear-shift with footkicks in its postion.

In our south Africa-vacations in 2003 once I was pissed about our rental car, a 2001 Renault Megane. For my opinion the gearshift was very jerky - so I was angry and took both hands for using the gear-shift.
The result was, that my wife was getting angry and has thrown me off the driver's seat - so I've seen the country as a passenger. My wife drove the whole 4500 km.

Guess what everybody? I finally drove a stick shift... sucessfully! On the way home from taking pictures of my grandmother's Crown Vic, I drove our manual Honda the whole 22 miles, and I only stalled it twice! I got some strange looks from a guy in a Lumina after stalling and restarting after a stoplight turned green I bet he's never even driven a manual in his life, what does he know?

Something interesting about manuals though, when you are on the freeway and in fifth gear it seems just like driving an automatic. In fact, when I got off the highway after driving on it for 20 miles, my dad had to remind me I was driving a manual, and that I had to shift

Here's the story:

My biological father died yesterday and he had a 1989 Toyota Pickup that has a 5 speed manual. There is also a possibility that I may inherit it from him, and if I do someone on my dad's side of the family will teach me to drive stick. I met most of my dad's side of the family for the first time yesterday and they really want to keep in touch with me. So if I learn to drive stick, I'll be practicing on the Toyota.

How many of you have driven a car with a freewheel?
I've driven two - Saab 96 V4 and Wartburg 353W, the gearchange can be made just by easing the throttle, when changing, you don't need to press the clutch.
Only problem is, there's no engine braking in this kind of system, you must use the brakes lot harder, like with automatics.

@BeanBandit: I have: my first car, a 1939 Rover 12. The useful feature of the Rover's freewheel was that you could turn it off, which I did when driving in London on account of the engine braking; I would turn it on at weekends when I went home to the Midlands. Probably sounds crazy but it worked for me!

I drive one almost every week... sort of. See, our '89 Toyota Van has a problem with the transmission, where it is reluctant to switch gears as you accelerate (it is a 4-speed automatic by the way). So when you need the engine to shift up (it's mostly a problem from 2nd to 3rd and from 3rd to 4th), you just have to let off the gas a bit ("feather" it as my dad says) and it will shift. It is almost like driving a manual, except that there isn't any fussy clutch involved.

The freewheel-system I don't know, only the half-automatic transmission "Saxomat" (called "Olymatic" in 60ies Opel's or "Hydramatic" by Borgward).
All NSU RO 80 had this system, with such a car I made the experience.
You choose the gears like usual, but there's no clutch. It's just a sensor in the top of the stick-shift. No big deal, you only had to learn, not to let the hand on the gear-shift while standing at the traffic-lights.

My NSU 1200 C had also such an half-automatic, but it was broken, when I bought the car, so we mounted a conventional gearbox and a clutch-pedal in the car.