Market specific tastes for transmission types / manual transmission overtuned?

[Crohns Racing]

Would be nice if certain markets could have a preference for transmission types. In the US automatic transmissions have always been the dominant choice of transmission, while other markets may prefer manual or at least be more accepting of them. In all my campaigns, I sell manual transmissions almost exclusively as they have such a small driveability hit for massive sportiness and reliability gain. No american in 2010 is buying a 100hp family sedan is going to make a stink over an automatic transmission. In my opinion, for campaign, manual transmissions are overtuned at least for the US market.

[dragonflyer]

Unfortunately, market peculiarities are not simulated. There's more things like that, for instance, in the US ladder frames were common for a long time, despite a hit to safety that they take making them very bad for Automation. The American land yachts of yore will sell, but copying how the US manufacturers actually built their cars in those days is not an optimal strategy in the game. The market groups have essentially modern preferences, if you build a popular car in Automation, it'll drive like a circa 2000s Toyota Corolla in BeamNG.

You could add quality to the transmission, but this won't solve sportiness issues. That said, a better question is whether you need sportiness in first place. A 100hp family sedan is not exactly expected to be sporty, it's expected to be reliable, but not to run races. For what it's worth, my experience with both technologies is that Automation nailed both of them. The Windstar I once drove had a nice kick, but the transmission was a constant source of problems, and it never particularly liked hard accelerations. The Volvo S40, with a manual transmission and much lighter weight, was very sporty, and it wasn't the transmission that broke. Both cars had about 200hp under the hood, the latter had a turbo (which was the source of most of its woes). Of course, it didn't help that generation of Windstar was essentially one of those V6 Mustangs stuffed into a Van body, and it showed when hauling stuff.