Nolyaw said:
Good luck on that sale. Did you ever hear of an automatic Cobra? Or ZO6? Or Viper? These are performance cars.People DRIVE them. Not sit with both hands on the wheel and go from point A-B.
I agree, but there is more to it than that.
No matter how good you are an auto box can & will change gear quicker than a human - FACT.
What an auto box can not do is allow the driver total control over which gear they want to be in, so for road, circuit, hill sprint and the such a manual is always going to be the better option. As you can change gear up or down when you want and not have to weight for the auto box to decide (even if you try manually shifting it, it still won't change unless it wants to!).
This then allows a driver to engine break and balance the car with the throttle. You can literally steer the car with the throttle pedal, which is indeed how the classic 50's and 60's racers used to get that loverly drifting stlye of cornering, and how ALL rally cars are driven.
BUT, and its a big but
Most people (and it appears to be a lot from America for lots of reasons, big roads, striaght roads, lazy V8 engines and such) are not the best drivers out there and will find a manual gear box a lot more difficult to drive quickly and consistantly and in addition thus having full control of the gears is of little importance to them. For drag racing in a moderatly quick road car and auto box is ideal for many people as all you have to do is stomp on the loud pedal and let the car do the rest. Hence the phase often used for auto's
"Squirt and go!"
This does however mean that at the 1/4 mile autos are usually very consistant and even though they have less rwhp they will shift faster allowing them to be as fast most of the time.
The key thing is NEITHER IS BETTER, just different. Ultimatley if a driver is good enough and the gear linkage slick enough then the manual car should be slightly faster. But the new auto box has 5 gears now so its in gear accelaration will be similar to the manual and it will still change gear quicker, it is only the lost power from the torque comverter that really prevents them being faster.
However this is all academic, as there are many different kinds of gearbox out there, race cars (not drag) all use sequential boxes. This are manual but do not always require the clutch to be used and allow faster gearshifts than even an autobox. But they still have drawbacks hence only a few road going cars use them.
CVT (constant velocity drives) sound very impressive, however the only ones in production are very weak and are only used on small bhp engines. But the theory goes that they have a constantly adjusting ratio so the engine revs will remain at its peak out put rather than reving through the entire rev range. Meaning the car will be producing the most power it can all the time and only the gear ratio increases propelling the car forward. On a torquey V8 or even a diesel this could make for a very fast car.
An easy way to picture this is to imagine 2 cones, one upside down and one the right way up which are joined via a belt around the narrow end of each cone, the cones would rotate at a set rpm via the engine but would move inwards forcing the belt to the wider section of the cones thus increasing the gearing while retaining a constant velocity.
), I promised myself that if Ford stuck a 5 speed auto in it and it performed well that I would own it. If only a 4 speed was offered there would have been no way that I would enjoy that car then knowing that others have a whole 'nother gear over me. I would have had fun shifting that box about 50% of my overall driving time. I drive a lot and I dont always want to drive like a "real man with his stick". 
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