Seriously, there is no one more critical of a car than I am., ask my wife. I hate jerks, bumps sloppy transmissions, bad shocks and many other things. Oh and rattles. But I now have a minivan with 52k miles on it and the only time I can feel it shift is from 1st to 2nd gear. I can slow down to turn a corner and it surely downshifts but I can’t tell when, and I can’t tell when it shifts back up. I can kinda tell by the sound of the engine, which by the way makes more noise thru the firewall than I like for it to. It doesn’t even jump or move when I put it into drive or reverse. It shifts into 3rd and 4th so smoothly that I wonder it it is OK. If it has a Torque converter clutch, I can’t tell when it locks up.
I don’t know how many vehicles have this smooth of a transmission but I never plan to drive a manual shift car.
SO, Dustboy, insist on an automatic, you will not be sorry!!
P.S. I drove a 2001 4 cylinder S-10 with an automatic over 200K miles for Carquest Auto Parts without any repair to the transmission. And I have driven automatics for 60 years and have never had one repaired. The last one I drove 140K miles before trading for my present vehicle. (in 15 years).