With Iranian oil becoming available to the world market just as prices were super soft, oil may not have found it's bottom yet. Just need an incident to nullify the lifting of trade sanctions with Iran to get them back up though. Cue the military industrial Saudi oil alliance ...:whistling:

I can't believe how low prices have become, I wonder how many people have gone all out and bought an expensive Sports car as a result? It's a pretty tempting proposition I'm sure. Fuel is just $5.50 here a US gallon, it's not been this cheap for 6 or 7 years.

It got a little out of hand at one point!
Gas sold for 46 cents a gallon in Michigan - Jan. 18, 2016

[QUOTE
The transmission issue is separate from the fuel type. Manuals sell in higher numbers and are geared for efficiency in Europe. In the US, nearly all manuals are geared for performance because that's what the few that buy them want them for. Even those installed in economy models. So the test numbers for automatics are near, or even better than, the manuals.[/QUOTE]

Last car I owned had an automatic from Germany and zero to 100KM's times where better with the automatic, city L/100KM better and highway the manual just beat out the auto.

Present car also from Europe only offers automatic transmissions.

The modern duel clutch setups are obviously quicker at changing as they already have the second clutch waiting for the next gear change, and can be more efficient too, but not often. Most manufactures are using duel clutch gearboxes now for people who want them.