Manual vs Auto - the choice is not an easy one.

[ignatzcatz]

And nobody has mentioned heel and toe application with a manual box. A car in which I had my first dabble in motorsport didn't have any synchromesh so down changes involved de-clutch rev the engine to a corresponding speed for the lower gear, clutch in and select the lower gear. Every time for every downshift otherwise the gear just would not select. Do all that and brake hard for a corner at the same time and you have to heel and toe. Every single racing and sporting car driver back in the day had to excercise this fancy footwork. And returning to the initial question what can be nicer than hearing the bark of an exhaust as the result of a particularly perfect down shift. And further nobody has mentioned the PDK gearbox that utilises two clutches. My wife has one of these on her Porsche Macan that when you select one of the sport driving modes, when the gear is changing down, it actually blips the throttle for you. Isn't that sad.
BTW it's a four speed close ratio toploader with a Hurst competition shifter for me!