I'm visiting the USA for my holiday this summer and am taking an interest in discussions about fuel prices (with petrol and diesel both at $10 a gallon in the UK your prices look cheap!) I am hiring a car to self drive and the family size saloon will have a 2.5 Lt engine and automatic transmission. If I were hiring in Europe a 1.6 or 1.8 with manual transmission 'stick shift' ... would be the norm. Why are automatic transmissions so popular when they tend to use 20% more fuel?