My father bought me my first car, under the conditions that it had to be a stick, since he wanted me to learn in general, and since you have to pay attention more to the road, your likelihood of getting into an accident decreases significantly.
Now I drive a manual Golf GTI and I'm firmly of the "cold dead hands" camp with having it. I always wonder why other people don't like driving, and then I drive their cars. Having the stick turns my 45-minute commute from a chore to something I legitimately somewhat look forward to. My lease runs out next year and it seems like 2018 is the last year for many stick-shift models.
Definitely going to miss it when we all go full electric. Even then I hope to have a "fun" car to drive around.
> since you have to pay attention more to the road
I'm teaching an attention-impaired teenager to drive, and we're doing stick for exactly this reason: extra cog load reduces daydreaming? Perhaps that's a controversial idea. But for him, so far so good.
Note that 2018 Volkswagen cars come with 6 years / 72k miles warranty... something to consider if you're unsure if you should get a new one now or later (as I doubt they'll keep this high warranty term for long, it was introduced to win back customers after #dieselgate).
At first possibly, but the mechanics of shifting become second-nature pretty quickly, about a few weeks to a month of daily driving.
After that, the idea is that you have to pay more attention to your surroundings to understand what gear you need to be in. Each gear has almost its own personality, something you only really get exposed to if you're forced to set it manually.
Its a lot like the car equivalent of the command line
Now I drive a manual Golf GTI and I'm firmly of the "cold dead hands" camp with having it. I always wonder why other people don't like driving, and then I drive their cars. Having the stick turns my 45-minute commute from a chore to something I legitimately somewhat look forward to. My lease runs out next year and it seems like 2018 is the last year for many stick-shift models.
Definitely going to miss it when we all go full electric. Even then I hope to have a "fun" car to drive around.