Our Mustang GT, Miata, and Mini Cooper are all manual transmission cars, but out family wagon (a Ford Freestyle) has a CVT transmission. OUt of the 20+ cars my wife and I have owned, at least 3/4 of them have had standard transmissions. My wife and I both learned how to drive stick shift cars first (me when I was 13), and I actually had trouble during my driver's education training because the car I was in was an auto, I wasn't used to my left foot doing nothing, and I kept hitting the brake pedal with it. I had to "learn" how to drive an auto, it took some geting used to.
I've only bought autos when I had little choice otherwise, like buying a used car where 90% of the cars available were auto trans cars or a standard wasn't available at all, like many wagons and minivans and SUV's. Generally speaking, a manual trans car will get better mpg, put more horsepower down to the wheels, and require less maintenance, although some of the newer computer controlled 5 and 6-speed autos are making big strides in mpg and hp delivery. Those are sure going to be expensive to repair or replace though. I've never had a clutch go out on a car, in nearly 400,000 miles of driving manual trans cars, many of them to well over 100k miles.
I'm not elitist about it, except to the extent that I think it is tragic that so many people want autos that MTX cars are slowly disappearing from the US. I've driven a number of sporty cars like the Corvette, Viper, S2000, Mustang Cobra, Miata, and others, and I wouldn't get anywhere near the same level of enjoyment out of them with an auto trans.
-Keith
If I'm in our other car ('98 Lumina LTZ) I keep it in 2nd of the 4 speed automatic's gears when city bound. There's too much lag time with new electronically controlled autos and constant 2 - 3 & 3 - 2 hunting in city traffic. Perhaps a kit would improve response but there's nothing like doing it yourself with a stick. 
