>>20789529https://www.bimmerfile.com/2018/07/28/usa-saving-manual-transmission/Now, the automatic transmission reached proliferation in the 1960 and 1970s. Americans from the silent and greatest generations were aging and lazy, getting tired of actually driving their cars, so they happily picked up a slush box 3 speed automatic for their comfortable land yachts and called it a day. The automotive industry was catering 50/50 to those older gen buyers and young boomers who wanted fun and fast cars. Automatic transmissions came as options in those cars, and many boomers bought them and never learned to drive a manual transmission vehicle. In 1972 the combined issues of EPA emissions standards and rising insurance premiums in the fallout of both giving young boomers power cars to kill themselves in, and the fallout of things like "Unsafe at any Speed" and the rise of the NHTSA and DOT standards around vehicle safety neutered fun vehicles for 20 years. Every single car, even the "sporty" ones in the 70s and 80s malaise period was an underpowered piece of shit. There was no actual reason for most people to continue driving manual transmission vehicles in that market, because none of the vehicles were actually "fun" to drive.
This meant that the few people in the United States who enjoyed driving manual and had carryover powerful cars from the 60s made driving "stick" the default subculture for people who enjoyed driving cool and quick cars.
Fast forward to the 90s and the invasion of fun Japanese ricer vehicles almost exclusively being manual transmissions, and that culture carried forward in the US to where most people who don't give a fuck about driving get an automatic, but the obsessive ones who LOVE cars and driving INSIST on manual transmissions.
Contrast that with Europe, where people were forced to buy it because it was cheap and they were all so poor. Ever since production costs for automatics went down, Euros are abandoning manuals.
