Well, yeah, automatics are boring. All you to is tell it if you want to stop, back up, or go forward. It does the rest automatically. Compared to an automatic, I had fun driving an '81 Escort with no power brakes, no power steering, and manual everything just because it was a stick-shift.

Yea...Although, the only manuals I have driven were a 93' Cheyenne 2500, a 76' CJ-7 (I learned on it, and it lacks power steering) and a 99' F-150. It wasn't exactly fun. But I emagine it would be if the cars were like mustangs. And yes, after I got the hang of it, it was almost more fun driving manuals then automatics, it made automatics look kind of boring.

Hell even modern performance/sport cars (mainly exotics and high end models) don't have true manual trans anymore. They have DSGs or semi-automatics (sequential manuals). There's no better feeling than a real clutch and shifting your own gears.

Yea, it seems rare in anything but pickup trucks (and even they seem kind of rare to have manual transmissions) and performance/sports cars. I can drive a stick though,

Lol, yes, it's a minority. I think they account for less than 5% of new vehicles sold. People here like to have things done for them. Automatics were once luxury items and now they're taken for granted. I think it's kind of dumb that people aren't buying manuals, but I can see some arguments (like sitting rush hour traffic moving 5 feet in an hour isn't real fun with a stick). Oh well.

I believe they are very minority there..

Are manual transmission cars in a minority in America?

It's funny the way American use the description "stick-shift" eg. "Can you drive a stick-shift" as if it's some really unusual technical feature like paddle gears on supercars are at the moment.

Actually, it was raining beforehand so I had to wait like two hours before I could go drive the Corvette. There wasn't a huge line that day (probably because of the rain) so there were only like four people ahead of me when I got in line for the Hummer.

Funny story about the Corvette's line. There was a lot of people in that line (after the rain dried), but because I requested a stick-shift, I got bumped up to the front because they had a stick-shift idling (all the others were autos and they were being used).

$10 for all that sounds pretty damn good! Although I guess you haven't mentioned how long you had to wait in queues but it's got to worth the wait anyway.

Sweet, I'd love to try that.

I've been to a couple of events similar to this, although unfortuantly, you couldn't drive a Vette at either of them (although they were both free, so that was a bit of a plus). One, Subaru put on to show off the Legacy. They had the Outbacks climbing a large pile of dirt (probably a good 20ft high), and the regular Legacys were on a track that was set up with pylons.

The other one was put on by Chrysler, so they had just about all their vehicles available. The Jeeps were on an offroad course, the SRT cars (the Viper, the Ram, and the Neon) you got driven around in, and the rest were on a little track. The best car I got to actually drive was a Crossfire, which is kinda fun. I mean, it's uber-nimble, which is always cool.