The first car I drove in 1964 was a stick, and I've owned many since.... especially sports cars like my TR-6, BMW, Datsun 1600 Roadster and even a Volvo... all sticks. Drove sticks in the military. So with driving over 50 years with manual (and automatic) transmissions, I bought my first Wrangler TJ. It had to be a stick, because I wanted it to be a great offroad vehicle. It wasn't long before the TJ started doing more rock crawling than anything... gentle then tougher. Trails eventually got so tough I was regularly forced to smoke the clutch. This pic is of my first TJ doing the Gatekeeper in Doran Canyon near Calico Ghost Town by Barstow Calif. That cloud around my TJ is not dust, it's smoke from the clutch.
It was on a rookie run on a particularly tough trail called Sledgehammer in Johnson Valley CA where I believe I was the only one in the group of more experienced wheelers with a stick shift Jeep. Everyone else had an automatic. It was a tough day where I felt like a beginner with a stick working hard to keep the engine from stalling and driving up & back on the same obstacle trying different lines. That's when I noticed the smoothness and better control (yes) the others had on the same obstacles with their automatics. Mrblaine was there with me that day, spotting me over the tougher obstacles.
It wasn't long after reading up on automatics and their 2-3X better low-end torque advantage that I figured out I wanted one. Then out of the blue, Mrblaine let me know of a complete used 32RH automatic with all the parts needed to install it. It took a weekend for a friend and I to get it installed.
Converting to that automatic was the best upgrade I ever did to my TJ, it did as much for its offroad abilities as the front & rear lockers I had installed years earlier. There was a night and day difference/improvement offroad for the tougher trails. Obstacles I had to winch up & over multiple years with the previous 5-speed manual transmission I was able to scoot up unassisted with the automatic, with the same 35" tires and 4.88 gearing... due in part to its increased low-end torque from the automatic's torque converter.
For me, I'd only buy a stick for a sports car. If I won the lottery & bought a Porsche, it'd have a manual transmission. But for the Jeep, I'm done with sticks... automatics for me now, I learned my lesson. And when the Jeep was stolen I had converted to the automatic was stolen, I made sure its replacement was an automatic. There are benefits that are hard to describe to anyone who hasn't crawled a particularly tough trail in 4Lo with an automatic.
Like the automatic's infinitely low first gear ratio as enabled by the torque converter. That means you can creep at any low speed you want without killing the engine. .01 mph? No problem. Pay no attention to the 1st gear ratio comparisons between an automatic and a stick. That ratio is a hard-fixed ratio with a manual transmission, not so with the automatic's torque converter making the first gear ratio into whatever you need it to be.
Need to back down a steep obstacle to try a different line? Think about what you'd have to do with the manual transmission. Stomping on the clutch & brake, needing 3 feet to work the pedals. With the automatic, you just let off on the gas to roll back & then just give it more gas again. You can maintain a position just with the gas pedal, no need to step on the clutch & brake. And many more benefits that only become apparent on a very tough trail.
Not to mention the winners of the past four years of EMC class in the King of the Hammers race/rock crawling event were all running automatics.
