[Legion681]

First of all, thank you for your feedback Yankee, Mike Penner and Sniper 226, I appreciate it.

But I think all of you guys are missing the point of my original post.

My post wasn't asking why die hard fans of the manual why they would prefer a manual transmission over an automatic.
I frankly believe the difference between a manual and a auto is very well known by almost everybody, no doubt about it.

But here my question was: why choose a manual over a DSG/SMG transmission ?. Not manual vs. auto.

Perhaps, you guys haven't got much info on DSG/SMG trannies and it's understandable because they are not so widespread like manuals and autos (basically so far only Audi, BMW, VW and a few others offer them).

Here a little breakdown of what they are:
- in their construction they are built exactly like a manual. No torque converter.
- the only part that is operated by the car is the clutch (or clutches, seen that DSG has two of them. SMG has one.). To users that means that they don't have a clutch pedal, but DSG/SMG keep the gear in until you tell it to change it (via the shifter or the paddles on the steering wheel) and gearchanges are blinding fast, especially for the DSG that requires only EIGHT MILLISECONDS to change a gear (SMG I believe it requires some 100-150 milliseconds: still much faster than any human making a gearchange with a manual), thanks to the fact it has two clutches and one is used to "preload" the gear the car's cpu thinks you are next gonna use.
On top of that, DSG/SMG blip the throttle to match revs PERFECTLY when downshifting.

All in all, DSG & SMG are manuals that have the clutch pedal eliminated (seen it's operated by the car), but for the rest you have the same (at 100 %) characteristics of a manual but it changes gears faster and it downshifts like a Formula 1 driver.
And last but not least, if you are in a traffic jam for example, you can always put it in full auto mode and let the gearbox do all the work. Please note: they are not manumatics (like for example Dodge uses in its Chargers). They are not automatics with some manual capability of some sort attached to them. They are manuals with the most tedious part of a manual gearbox (=the clutch pedal) automated (and this, in part, it's why they outperform manuals...).

Now that you know a bit more about it...I repeat my question:
why chose a manual over a DSG/SMG when the latter do the same thing, give you the same control, but do it much better and also offer a full auto capability in case for example you are stuck in traffic ?

What is the advantage the manual tranny has over these DSG & SMG ?
I personally see none. But if there is something I am missing, please tell me.
That's why I am asking...