I drive both semi-regularly, my car is manual (second-generation MR2) and my parents' car is automatic. Manual is just so much more fun, although some of that may also just be driving a sports car is way more fun than an SUV or a pickup truck. Taking corners well just feel so
satisfying, though. And when you drive manual every day it just becomes second nature - like there's never any real worry about whether or not to shift because you're used to your own car and you know what speeds require what gears, and eventually you get to being able to feel it out in any other car.
Driving automatic just feels like driving sluggishly, or half-asleep. This analogy won't really make sense to anyone but it's like the difference between playing tetris with customizable handling vs playing something like puyo puyo tetris with line clear delay and stuff - it just feels unclean, like something is clogging up your perfect lines of action.
I've never driven a shitty manual though (those don't survive long in the US, since automatics are so wide-spread) so maybe that would change my mind.
Have kinda fucked around with my aunt's VW bug back in mexico (look up the history of those cars in mexico if you want a fun time, they're
almost absurdly popular) but that car was pretty well-maintained and other than that nothing much.
'And when the entire mountain is chiseled away, the first second of eternity will have passed.’ You may think that’s a hell of a long time. Personally, I think that’s a hell of a bird.