Just saw an article in a local shopper's weekly, about manual transmissions.

[Xithras]

16. Caveat: In America

In the rest of the world, manual transmissions are still the norm. The first time I rented a car in Britain, I was told that they were taxiing me to another location because they were out of automatics at their Heathrow lot. When I told the agent that I could just take a manual, she looked at me in surprise and said she'd never given a stick to an American before. She told me that in Britain, automatics were primarily used by the elderly, the disabled, and American tourists. I was apparently the first American she'd ever met who could drive a stick