Manual advantages:
1) You get control over which gear you want the car to rev at.
2) Especially for utes and trucks, you can use this to compensate the load. In automatics, you can only choose from 1-3.
3) Holden and Ford hardly produce cars with manual transmission. So it makes you more unique having manual as roughly 10% of the production is manual (rumours).
4) You won't get bored changing gear and for others it keeps you awake.
5) Ever noticed that manual doesn't come with transmission cooler and how automatic does?
6) Try hill starting an automatic without any batteries connected
7) V8 supercars use manual gearboxes. F1 drivers are too lazy
. I bet V8 brutes also uses manual gearboxes.
8) REAL drivers use manuals with dogbox.
Manual disadvantages:
1) You have to change gear almost all the time. Failure to do so may cause damage to running gear such as over-revving.
2) Despite its rarity, you pay more for having a manual. Second hands are harder to source at times particularly utes.
3) If you don't get used to clutching, you will have fun with lovely smells of clutch coasting and a nice welcoming bill.
4) Initial learning phase welcomes gear crunching sounds and stalling.
Automatic advantages:
1) Good for city cruising, or during peak hour traffic where you won't have to bother changing gears all the time.
2) Cheaper than manual counterparts for Holden and Ford. Funny that eh? Imported cars particularly from Japan are quite the opposite.
3) No need to worry about clutch coasting, the computer and hydraulics do the work for you. Also no stalls until you start meddling with the car.
4) Drag drivers prefer automatics most of the time. You just press the accelerator pedal and hang tight!
5) Who could forget that taxi drivers love to have both feet resting on brake and accelerator pedal with automatics? Can't do that easily and comfortably with manuals despite breaking the laws.
6) With utes you can have bench seats with the automatic setup as column shift.
Automatic disadvantages:
1) Can't roll start without a battery easily.
2) Harder to repair than manual counterparts
3) Can't have own control of gears when you have varied load.
Btw, I have manual. It was a real pain to source a manual VS ute
