I bought a new 1976 Plymouth Volare with a manual 3 on the tree, and because I have a messed up left leg, after a year I changed it to an automatic myself using a junkyard trany. Had to pull the radiator and get a trany cooler installed in it by a radiator shop, and I ran the cooling lines to trany. I used a manual choke cable with twist to lock, connected up to the kickdown linkage as I did not have the time during summer break from college and working in the steel mill during the summer, to pull the firewall mounts and linkage that worked with the kickdown linkage.
I also drove a friends 1968 Camaro with a 327 and 4 speed manual. That car was fun to drive. Once when I was having fun with it and he was in the passengers seat I laid tire all the way through 1st, eased up on the gas but not all the way during the shift to second to keep the RPMs up but not over-rev the engine and laid tire all the way through 2nd. I bet there was only about a 12 inch gap in the marks on the road that the back tires made from that shift. Afterwards he said "you know Jim, you can let up on the gas when you shift." And I said "I did but not all the way, on purpose just to keep the RPMs up but not over-rev the engine."
I swear that Camaro had soooo much power that once when I opened it up coming up a hill I was seriously thinking that I had to get off the throttle or it would be going fast enough to leave the ground at the top of the hill, so I let up on the throttle.
When the frame rusted out on that he bought another with a blown engine and we transferred the engine and trany to the newer Camaro. And when he finally sold it the person who bought it bought it for the motor and trany.
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Driving a manual will also make it easier to learn to drive a motorcycle.