Figuring this one out (and worse yet why an automatic in the $450k SLR) will only encourage everyone to ponder the other MB tough questions -- like why a $15k American or Japanese car is readily available in a dozen colors but 90% of MB's apparently must come in either black or silver (and if you are so audacious as to order an MB color not suited to a funeral procession, are those little metalic speckles in your paint really an option that anyone should have to pay $500 for).

I've owned a stick shift car of one kind or another continuosly for almost 25 years. I don't manually shift because it's necessarily the fastest way to go -- I just like doing it. That said, it doesn't take too long tap shifting the SRT-6 on a winding road to forget it's an automatic -- almost anyway. I do still keep a manual transmission car to switch off, and so long as I'm financially able plan to keep doing so well into my AARP years.