Yeah when getting my last car, I asked if they had manual transmission cars available and none were on the lot. Everything automatic. I asked why. Their claim is that so many people dont know how to drive standard. If I really wanted standard I could have special ordered a model that still had it as an option, but I settled for an automatic they had on the lot.
Where I live there is not much stop & go traffic as well as lots of hills and so manual transmissions are nice and you can use them to save from burning up your brakes by using the engine to break the car down hills etc especially during winter weather to coast with some resistance down a hill etc.
Most modern automatics have electronic shift controls and so people who still want to be able to shift can shift without a clutch, just by directly controlling the solenoids that control the modern automatics. My Honda Civic EX VTEC had a transmission that I was tempted to override the shift controls in it with a joy stick short of shift control, but the car died before I made it a reality. Its like the sports cars with paddle shifting on steering wheels for shifting up and down gears which the transmission is automatic.
My other thing I wanted to do, but never did was have a switch on my dash to enable VTEC at will vs when the computer wanted it to engage. There is a solenoid on the aluminum head that has oil pressure behind it. When it opens oil pressure presses on pins on the overhead cams and it makes the engine run on a second set of lobes that control valve duration. The valves stay open longer to get more fuel and air and it makes the fuel sipper 1.6 liter turn into a high performance engine putting out power close to a V6. One problem I realized with a toggle switch for solenoid was that the computer still would only be sending a short burst of fuel from the injectors and so i would have had to have a circuit board added that made the injectors open to spray fuel a tad more in addition to changing the valve duration and so thats why that didnt happen.
Also had plans to cheat the O2 sensors too, but found out that is illegal. There is cheaters for racing purposes, but they are illegal for cars on the main roads. I was going to cheat the O2 sensors and put a dump valve on the exhaust to make it very loud and lots of horse power, but decided i'm just going to leave it be vs get locked up for having an illegal non DOT approved car on the road.
Had a 2003 Chevy Silverado with v8 require knock sensor replacement.... they buried the 2 sensors under the intake manifold to where you have to take the intake manifold off to get to them. I traded that truck for the 2016 Hyundai Elantra that i have now because in addition to the knock sensors being bad, the truck also had frame rot and a torsion bar was half rotted through and drivers side leaf spring broke where it acts like a trail arm so accelerating you felt the rear axle want to move forward under the truck and that put force on U-joint and transmission. It was messed up badly so I traded it.
The Elantra has been a good car and with its 6-speed automatic very good gas mileage as well as the speedometer in it goes up to 160mph and if it wasnt for the shut off around 112mph it would probably top out around 130mph on a flat.
Here is the dash the elantra has... and the 160 mph is just silly. You have to put out serious horsepower to push past the 130mph barrier, and I doubt this 1.8 liter would go past 130 mph. I have no way of testing it safely so I hypothesize about its top speed. Nor do I want to be in jail for going over twice the speed limit if governor cheated. Its surprisingly a torquie 4 cylinder engine. 6th gear like 2000 rpms at 75 mph in the 65
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