Hi,

I have both, I can tell you honestly its up to you. The auto. has a manual like feature where you can select your own gear or just put it in D. By tapping the gear **** to the left or right you can manually select gears 1 thru 4; if you hold it towards the left rather than tapping it, it will automatically select the correct gear for you. Now if you hold the gear lever to the right it will automatically go back to drive. It also has the Mercedes winter feature where if you select that feature, it will start the car from standstill in 2nd gear rather than 1st to give you a bit better traction taking off from a standstill and it will reverse in a 2nd reverse gear to give you better traction backing up.

The 6 speed is nice if you like manuals like me. However its not the best manual transmission out there. The gears are clunky especially when cold and the throws are long for a sports car. Also the car requires you to shift through three gears to hit 60 mph so it makes it almost identical in 0-60 times as the automatic. Also the clutch has a real hi grab so at first i was slipping the clutch until i got used to it; this in addition to a clunky gearbox and long throws makes it for a rather uncomfortable daily driver especially in traffic conditions. However in the higher end the manual will take over the auto. but again its only a slight advantage not a huge one.

SO i recommend you drive them both before you get one so you can see what i'm talking about. Dont discredit the automatic its a 5spd auto. from Mercedes, the ratios are great and the car really performs well with the auto.