Well, I'm in a bit of a bad situation and I need some outside opinions. You see, all my life I've defended people purchasing vehicles with a manual tranny. Having driven a handful of them for fun and at work I always wished I could have a sports car with a stick sitting in the driveway. Unfortunately, I am a dumbass.

About a month ago I purchased my 05 lmt 6spd, thinking, "I'm gonna have blast driving this car every day". Needless to say the car was really fun, for a week. Week 2, the 6spd had lost its novelty, and a week ago it was becoming more of an annoyance. What's wrong with the car? Nothing, but in buying the 6spd I jumped the gun, completely ignoring the fact that I drive long distances every day and mostly through the city.

Driving the 6spd in constant stop and go isn't my idea of fun, compound that with minor weekly back ups/mini traffic jams on my usual routes and the manual tranny is just plain aggravating. I rarely even get the chance to drive the car above 5th gear (sometimes even 4th, depending on traffic). I have enough on my plate trying to earn my bachelor's degree currently and I'm running out of reasons to back up my ongoing argument with my fiancee over the practicality of owning a crossfire .


I just can't justify a large sum of money on a car which is, for me at least, completely impractical. On the flip-side, my time spent driving in the country has been amazing, and I do love the crossfire in general. So my options are as follows:

- Keep the car (which is basically out)

- Find an auto crossfire (seems unlikely, I started looking a week ago, plenty of new xfires to be found at around 17-18k, but no used auto cars in my area which fall into my price range)

- Go with a different car (I'm open to recommendations, I'm looking for something sporty yet practical, probably auto or manumatic, in the $10-13k range).


So what would you do? I've been straining my brain for a week thinking about this and I need some (sort of) unbiased opinions.