Another thoughtful piece,
Another thoughtful piece, John, but I have to disagree with your point that: "Although the cars are not made faster by having a stick shift, the constant rowing of gears distracts some from the fact they are driving a slow car." For many years (1960s-70s), my wife and I drove MGs (As, Bs and B-GTs), which had small-displacement, relatively underpowered engines. But because they had manual shifters, we were able to extract maximum performance in both everyday and competitive driving. Cars of that time that matched automatics with similarly small engines were woefully underpowered, mainly because their shift programs could not keep pace with acceleration demand. Being able to manually downshift when a boost was needed, instead of after it was needed - such as when entering a turn - made all the difference in maintaining acceleration.