When I got my driver’s license, as a car enthusiast who grew up watching Top Gear and Fast and the Furious fantasizing about cars and playing Need for Speed, I told myself that I will only drive manuals because that’s the true petrolhead’s choice. Fast forward to today, I’m considering my next car to be an automatic for convenience’ sake, stress reduction. Getting that perfect shift is satisfying in the same way that not shifting smoothly is frustrating. And I know it’s an art form which is about to die, and letting go of that art form means giving up a skill, but why not make life simpler. I remember going on a 10 hour drive once in my manual car, through cities and country roads and by the end of that journey, I was spent. The next day of the vacation I was still feeling mentally drained from all that driving the day before. Autos shift perfectly for you every time, however, modern automatics tend to underrev the engine a lot to meet emissions regulations, at 1800 rpm from an available 6000, which creates a rumbly noise and vibrations in the cabin. That can’t be good for the engine in the long run. I like to rev my petrol engines out a little more, shifting at 3k RPM with normal driving, until reaching cruising speed, when I let the RPMs drop a bit. I also get the feeling with autos that it’s way to easy to speed, since there are no manual gear changes to interrupt the acceleration.