Automatic vs Manual
"As for US cars being automatics, most Americans consider someone driving a manual to be either childish in trying to act like they have a sports car when they don't, or too poor to afford an automatic. It's considered rather crude to have to constantly, manually shift gears and truth be told manuals today do not get much better fuel efficiency because the testing is using a far more conservative shift pattern than the typical driver uses, and with more recent efficiency mandates the auto manufacturers have tweaked automatics to shift nearer the most fuel efficient point possible"
Nah, it's just many Americans can't cope with shifting manually properly ;) (same as they can't cope with parallel parking). We're all used to it here and (with a few gear cruncher exceptions) we can generally shift smoothly and efficiently. Given the nature of the roads here I'd rather be manual changing than frustratingly be waiting for the automatic to change and end up having to floor the thing to do it (which is worse for efficiency).
Automatics here aren't something you pay much of a premium for either so manual isn't seen as the poor man choice. The attitude here is you must be incompetent if you need an automatic.
As for the last part, we are far more obsessed with fuel efficiency due to the high cost of fuel, and modern cars are very fuel efficiently "tweaked", but with power where you need it depending how much you spend on the car. Besides we have so much computer control even on manual cars that fuel efficiency can be assured whilst gear changing manually. Having hired many American cars (small and large), I'm always shocked by the gas guzzling nature of them, but I can see why you don't care because of the fuel prices. It's not like they were more poweful either. Foot down and lots of growl, but pulls away slow as a snail.
And anyway, automatic transmissions are more complex and costly to repair.
"For a sports car on the other hand a good manual transmission is useful to handle the higher torque, but since most people aren't driving sports cars they should be considered an aside."
Many European cars drive more like sports cars anyway and don't have the handling of a bus ;)