I have read a number of media reports which basically report the same story - a would be car thief breaks into a car with a manual transmission and then fails to steal the car because he does not know how drive stick. Supposedly, manual transmissions are now so unusual that many up and coming car thieves are mystified by ye old clutch.
As the owner of a car with a manual transmission, this type of story gives me the warm fuzzies. Nonetheless, I was wondering if anyone had any hard evidence of a trend. Are manual transmission equipped cars now less likely to be stolen?
Note that this phenomena is probably confined to the United States. The last time I was in Europe - manual transmissions were still more common than automatics.