Personaly I prefer a stick shift, thats probably down to the fact I have grown up arround stick shifts and learnt to drive in one. I have driven company cars and still have to say that I much prefer the 'raw feel' of a stick shift, In a comparison the feel of driving a BMW 7 series or an aston martin vantage to a beat up white ford seria 2.4L rear wheel drive <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> nice. , and the seria wins hands down, it feels like a caged beast that I am aware of how dangerous it could be if I let it go, whist the BMW and Aston martin felt like a luxury living room on wheels. When driving an automatic more than any thing I miss the clutch. In terms of safty and ideal car yes I want ABS and traction control and all the computer gubbins to translate what I am telling the car to do into what I want it to do, yes I would like the car to perform what I ask of it as eficently as it can, but I want to be aware of the fact that I am driving a car, I want to be litening to the tone of the engine to tell what the revs, it gives me a lot of information about the car, how well its running and if there are any problems without distracting my attention from the task in hand.
an earlier comment was made describing that automatic was 'safer' as it was less distracting, I have to dissagree, I would say it is a task that keeps your attention to what you are doing and you dont have to take your eyes from the road to do it, which is alot more than can be said for checking your speed (one thing that concerns me about the safty of speed traps). Another reason I think stick shifts are safer is when something goes wrong at 70MPH and the engine cuts out in a stick shift you stamp on the clutch and cruise whist pulling into the hard shoulder, the one and only time this has happened to me in an automatic it stayed in gear and quickly started to grind to a halt before you fiddle with the stick to find nutral. Not pleasent for me or the person behind me I expect. Then how do you bump start a automatic... you can't and they are a heck of a lot more complicated to fix and look after yourself.
in conclusion of that essay I prefer stick shift.
enough of that, I am a Cat in a Hat