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I'm on the fence. If you're casually racing it once and awhile and otherwise just driving around town, you're better off with an automatic, especially the new paddle-shifters that can shift more accurately and MUCH faster than 99.9999% of the population.
If you're taking your 911 or Lambo or whatever and turning it into a dedicated track car, be it drag or any sort of racing that involves turning - you're better off with a manual transmission to a certain point. Of course if you're building a dedicated drag car, once you get past the 9 and a half second mark in the 1/4 mile (or less if you're not a seasoned professional driver) you're putting a powerglide, c6, th400, lenco, jerico, etc in your car.
I would estimate that 98% of the cars Lamborghini or Porsche or Ferrari or Audi or Chevy (regarding the Corvettes specifically) sell go to consumers and not race teams. No point in having two sets of tools, two sets of training, two entire sets of parts and perhaps even two different production facilities in order to produce a car only 2% of your buyers want.
For the record, I absolutely DESPISED automatics until my first and last Camaros. The first was a stock car, stock auto on a LOT of nitrous, and I would have blown that car all to hell at 17 with 200hp worth of juice and a whopping 18 months of driving history had I not been able to keep two hands on the wheel. The last one was a 3800rpm stalled huge cam car, and I could pace just about every AWD car I raced off the line with a little throttle feathering and then blast by them when I was able to really catch traction. Would have just sat there blowing the tires off with a 6spd.
In my eyes, there are more pro's than con's to an automatic for a street car.
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