I'm in total agreement here. I learnt to drive in a manual and thus my licence says I legally can do so (in the UK you can also get an 'automatic transmission' only licence that exempts you from legally driving manual/stick-shift cars).
However, the moment I could jump to an auto, I did. It's just SO much easier. I've been driving purely autos for over 20 years now. A lot of us see cars as a way to get us faster from A to B; there's no love affair here, it's just a tool. Any tool that makes it easier for the operator to use, is an improvement in my view.
Sure, keep the manual gearbox for the track. That's where 'fun' and 'hobby' driving should be. Out on the road, it's fuel economy (be it EV or Fossil) these days that really counts, and autos are much more economic.
I had exactly the opposite experience! I drove an automatic Mazda3 for ten years, it was the car I bought straight out of college, and I never viewed it as anything other than a tool which got me from point A to point B. A couple years ago, I traded in the 3 and got a 2020 Miata with a stick shift, for the simple reason that my wife has two cars of her own (a 2020 BRZ and a 2008 Lotus Elise) and they're both manual transmission, and it felt stupid to have cars in the family that only one person could drive. Any time we took the Elise out somewhere, she had to be the dedicated driver, which did in fact mean that at one point she had to drive herself to urgent care while I sat in the passenger seat and felt like an absolutely useless asshole.
I figured there were two options - either she could get rid of her manual transmission cars and replace them with automatics that I could drive (which wasn't a great solution because she really likes her manual transmissions and it seems dumb to ask her to get rid of something she loves) or I could learn how to drive a stick shift, and I knew the only way that I was _really_ going to learn how to drive a stick was if I was doing it every day, with no other options. Otherwise, I'd learn the theory of driving stick (clutch in, shift, clutch out slowly while you give it gas) but never actually be able to put it into practice at a time that it mattered.
Hence, the miata. My wife had to drive it home from the dealership when we got it, because I couldn't drive it myself, and I spent about a week trapped at home because I couldn't reliably get my car to start moving at traffic lights, but once I figured out how to reliably get from point A to point B again I realized that actually, it was kinda fun to get from point A to point B, and that there was no reason I couldn't just make a trip where point A and point B were the same place, driving just for the hell of it. Now I autocross once a month, go on drives with the local miata club, and put new car parts on my car to change what it does or how it sounds or how it feels, things that I never would have imagined I'd do back when I was driving an automatic just because I felt so much less connected to the use of the car.
I'm not totally convinced the automatics are more economical. There are 3 cars currently at our house. 2016 1.2 petrol manual, 2013 2.0 diesel manual, and 2021 1.0 petrol automatic. The 2013 car would consistently get 5 ish mpg better than the 2016 car, and that one would consistently get 5-10mpg better than the automatic
However, the moment I could jump to an auto, I did. It's just SO much easier. I've been driving purely autos for over 20 years now. A lot of us see cars as a way to get us faster from A to B; there's no love affair here, it's just a tool. Any tool that makes it easier for the operator to use, is an improvement in my view.
Sure, keep the manual gearbox for the track. That's where 'fun' and 'hobby' driving should be. Out on the road, it's fuel economy (be it EV or Fossil) these days that really counts, and autos are much more economic.