Why the prejudice against automatics. No prejudice, manuals are just rarer and more fun to drive, once you get used to the knack of starting off in first with the unusually wooden accelerator pedal! The other thing is alot of people get a shock to see a stick shift in a Merc, so for novelty value it's unusual. Anyway builds muscles in your free hand for when something needs a fixin! It's like why they put the ignition switch on the left side of the steering wheel, just different I suppose. They call Volkswagens Hitlers Revenge, I'm not so sure.