These cars are DEFINITLY meant to be DRIVEN. I test drove a stick and didn't like it, bought an auto.

It was much later that I realized that shifting much below 3000 took practice to do smoothly.... but 3500 or 4000 was a breeze.

In my TEST I was shifting at 2000 - you can be smooth at those RPMs but is seems like it takes practice to do so.
Again, this car was designed to be DRIVEN. But Oldoc has a point, might be time to get it looked at... or bring it to a GTG and let the rest of
us evaluate it in person! Seriously.