I love my stick shift, and echo others that it increases my engagement level, but I'm at the point of buying my next car and I know it'll be automatic.
Too many companies don't try to push any advanced technology into their manuals; if you want any kind of active safety features you need to go automatic. Honda was probably the outlier; I test drove the Civic Hatch and it had everything except for low-speed follow available in manual. But others like Subaru, Mazda, etc won't put any of those features (adaptive cruise, etc) in manual packages, at least in the Canadian market.
Ouch... I ended up with Mazda for one of my cars because in the US market it had the full range of safety features, and was available with manual transmission. Automatic braking and collision detection at low and high speeds, pedestrian collision detection, rear cross traffic alerts, radar cruise control
I did notice that trend which is unfortunate. The tendency for sporty cars to forgo safety equipment. I hate it.
It looks like the Mazda 3 sedan is now available in CA with the same equipment.
Too many companies don't try to push any advanced technology into their manuals; if you want any kind of active safety features you need to go automatic. Honda was probably the outlier; I test drove the Civic Hatch and it had everything except for low-speed follow available in manual. But others like Subaru, Mazda, etc won't put any of those features (adaptive cruise, etc) in manual packages, at least in the Canadian market.