Percentage of Micras sold with manual vs. automatic transmissions

[MetroMPG]

I've always wondered what proportion of the Micra's sales are with a manual vs. automatic transmission. This isn't the type of info the automakers usually release. (Maybe they don't want their competitors knowing.)

Last time I compared the numbers from our own Micra garage stats, we saw:

Transmissions (out of 124, 2 not stated)

• 83 (67%) manual transmissions, up from 55
• 41 (33%) automatics, up from 27

Of course, there's no way that number represents the general population. Manual owners tend to me more "enthusiast" owners, who tend to be the type of people who are on forums. So the manual is over-represented here. But by how much??

Someone gave me the idea to use cars for sale as a way to research it, so that's what I did. Check these results:



614 new & used Micras listed nationally on trader.ca. (Almost all of them are from dealerships.) But 48 don't have the transmission type listed. So we will say that's 566.

• 429 (76%) automatic transmission
• 137 (24%) manual transmission

That's still pretty good!

Consider that last year:

Just 3.6 per cent of new car buyers in Canada so far this year [2015] opted to shift their own gears.

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe...ticle26795936/

I wonder how representative it is of all 20,000 Micra sales. I'd bet it's probably pretty close.