Here in the UK, most of us learn to drive with a manual gearbox, and as a result find the average American's fear of a stick-shift rather funny.
The truth is that it is a little trickier to learn on a manual car, or to convert from an automatic, but it's not exactly brain surgery.
I'd certainly agree that an automatic-type gearbox is much more relaxing to drive, as you only have to worry about which way you're pointing and whether to go faster or slower. Great in slow moving traffic as well.
With a manual 'box, you have to be thinking about something extra - engine revs. You have to make a concious decision to change up when the engine revs get high, and change down again when the revs die away. Bad stuff happens if you stick in one gear for too long - rev the engine too high and you're putting a lot of extra wear on the engine; force the engine to struggle with insufficient revs and you risk damaging it too. All the while, you have to be thinking about whether to change up or down, or use the accelerator to keep the engine revs where you want them to be. While all this is going on, you have an extra pedal that you must push each time you want to change gears - try it without, or push the pedal only part way, or release it too soon and your car makes an expensive grinding noise as the gears crash together.
It sounds more complicated than it is in reality. It should only take an hour or two to get the basics down and be in a position to drive without ever again having to thing about this conciously, but the real advantage with a manual is what you can do if you *are* thinking about the engine revs.
You know the car develops more power at higher revs, as the rev counter heads towards the red line. Although that peak quickly tails off - there's no point going into the red, you should have changed up a gear before the needle gets there. So when you want to go fast, you rev the daylights out of the car. You'll also know that the car develops very little of its torque below about 1700 revs - when the needle falls below 2000RPM, it's time to change down a gear. With a manual 'box, driving has the added fun of trying to keep the engine revs in a useable range - high up the scale for high performance, between 2,000 and 3,000RPM for more sedate (and fuel efficient) driving (does anyone know the ideal RPM to get the best fuel economy out of the MINI?).
And then there are all the fun tricks you can do with a manual box - engine braking, downshifts to release more power when *you* want it, not when the automatic decides to react to the kick-down command, having exactly the right gear for going up or down hills, etc.
You said you were buying a Cooper? That comes with a rev counter, doesn't it? Completely useless if you have the CVT.
Go manual - you know it makes sense. But I'd get an hour's or so practice in somebody else's manual car before jumping into a brand new Cooper if you've never tried a stick shift
