I don't see the huge appeal over stretching your left leg and moving a stick around (small things amuse small minds I guess) :cheeky: (that's a joke)
MT is good for holding the gear you want for the best power/RPM. I can easily do that in my car via sequential stick shifting or paddle shifting. The automatic Sport Mode in DSG VW's is excellent at holding gears anyway and would be a faster option if you were a noob. If I lived and worked in the mountains a manual would be great, but I don't - I work in the city. I've driven manuals in long stop/start traffic and it's annoying. In that situation you want something that's as comforting and relaxing as possible to keep the stress levels low, and my car delivers that for me in spades (just pop a DVD on if I'm cheeky or browse my 30GB internal HDD for different music). I don't need to move a stick around to have fun while driving. I understand the pleasure of mastering MT but then some people still prefer to listen to vinyl records as well instead of MP3's. Once might be better in one or two ways, but the other has more than enough pro's to make it the preferred option. Just to be clear, I'm not having a go at MT or saying it's bad and have utmost respect for those who drive it, but just highlighting that whlie they're undeniably better than conventional automatic slushboxes, the same can't be said of DSG.
What I might do at this point is move the AT/MT discussion to a new thread and add some sort of useless poll. :nuts: