From my cold, dead hands!

Sully1190 said
Might be because people like to be "different."

Might be because they can get better gas mileage.

thats not necessarily true these days. i was surprised while looking around at some new 4 cyl. cars to find that in many cases the automatic is getting better mpg then the manual now. with 5 and 6 speed automatics i guess it makes a big difference.