my daughter and SIL have just returned a nice Audi3 manual at barcelona after a week in southern fra

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I would suggest you pick up the car at an airport. I think you would have a much greater chance of getting the car you need. You can click on my name and read about the fun we had with Europcar in Aix-en-Provence in my trip report from June 2007!
Have you thought of taking lessons on a manual? You have plenty of time - it is not as hard as people think and once you know how, you won't forget. Think of all of the money you will save on your next and future trips. lodging It's fun too.
As others say - They must pick up from a major location like an international airport lodging where there will be a larger fleet of cars. Even if they book an automatic from a smaller location - one may not be available on the actual day. All that needs to happen is for a previous renter not return a car in time, or damage the acr, and they are SOL.
One of the reason that automatics are expensive in Europe s that even the larger rental agencies lodging carry premium or higher price category cars with automatic shift. Economy or mid size and sports cars will be impossible to find.
my daughter and SIL have just returned a nice Audi3 manual at barcelona after a week in southern france and Northeastern spain, because the cheapest automatic they could find was a Mercedes E class at twice the rate, having tried on-line and at the airport. However, they were enamored with the small but sporty Audi.
Do try to get an automatic. I can drive a manual, but it's a real irritant when you're driving a lot through smaller places, in hilly or mountainous areas, in heavy traffic. Especially tiring on any days that involve long driving legs--of course if you're doing 95% of your driving on freeways, it won't matter a lot. But we like to get off the main routes and explore.
I would still have someone in your group learn to drive a manual - you can learn the basics in about 1 day with a second day to gain some added proficiency. Think of it as insurance, it is still possible lodging that there may be no automatics (staff error, repairs, computer glitch, whatever...). Again, not likely, but a good idea just in case.
It's time to learn how to drive a stick. A lot of the world drives sticks. Although I'm American, I've only owned sticks since I was 16 in the...early 70s. My new 2008 car I also bought in a stick. It's important to know how to drive one.
One of my best male friends, who's been going to Europe for decades and who has lived in Paris, reserved lodging an automatic a few summers ago. When he and his friend got to Paris, the automatic wasn't available for some reason and only sticks were. He had forgotten how to drive one although that's all he drove back in the 80s while living in Western Africa. It was good that his friend still owned and drove a stick or else they wouldn't have had a car to get them to their friends house in Provence. Happy Travels!
I agree with Guenmai that it is a very important skill to learn. One becomes comfortable with manual shift quite quickly --- except when you are stopped on a sharp incline, but life is never perfect, is it?
Getting lessons on a manual is easier said than done in the US. Driving schools typically don't offer them - and unless you have a friend who has one and doesn;t mind your stripping the gears while you learn - you're out of luck. (And most manuals here are sports cars - and your friend is as likly to let you learn on theirs as to cut off their head).
I now have a Subaru Forester and it's a stick. I bought it brand new a few years ago. As for striping gears, one just has to be careful and remind the person learning to put in the clutch. I'm glad that, when I was a teenager, that folks, along with my parents, took me out to learn a stick. My parents said that I would not get a car until I had successfully learned how to drive both types of sticks; American with the shift in the steering wheel and non-American, with the stick shift between the seats. They then bought me a Volkswagen Bug as my first car. And I didn't lodging strip any gears nor did any of my friends who also learned to drive on sticks. Happy Travels!
Well, I wouldn't say that once you learned, you never forget. I have. I knew how to drive one once when I was younger, but have not driven one in maybe 40 years. I'm not going to rent a manual when going to Europe.
Yes, you cannot take driving lodging lessons on manuals where I live, as I tried to find a place. The one place I found said you had to have your own car. And no car rental agency will rent you a manual where I live because they don't want stripped gears. To take the three day driving lessons on manuals, if you had a car, cost more than an entire week's rental of a manual car in Europe, as I recall.
My best friend bought a new VW a few years ago and it happened to be a stick. The model that she selected happened to be only made in a stick and she didn't know how to drive one. But that was her dream car, so she bought it.
As her husband lives overseas in the military, he wasn't able to teach her and I didn't even know that she had bought the car or else I would have given her stick lessons in my car. So, she said her new car sat on the dealer's lot for quite a while as she didn't know how she would get it home. She was busy working and still had her old car, so there was no big rush.
Then the dealership called her and said she needed to come and pick up her new car. The dealership arranged to give her lessons on how to drive it and took her out in it. It took her some time, probably months, to finally get it and feel comfortable and she was quite nervous. Plus, we're in L.A.; fast traffic one minute, bumper-to-bumper traffic lodging another lodging minute, hills, lodging mountains, driving through the canyons, etc.
Plus, her clutch pedal is one that I've never experienced before. It's a round thing on the floor that one pushes in, not the type of traditional clutch pedal that is suspended and pushed down. I had trouble driving her car with that type of clutch pedal and I've been doing it for decades. She had me drive her some places, in her car at first.
She finally got the hang of it, but still is more of an automatic car driver than a stick shift one. For me, driving a stick comes as natural as brushing my teeth. I can drive one anywhere, even in mountains, on steep hills, and not use the handbrake and not even roll back. Happy Travels!
It is also a lot easier said than done for some people, including those living in at least one large American city where few people own private lodging cars of any stripe and fewer still will willingly lend them out for friends to take a spin in the well-trafficked streets. .
It doesn't matter how far in advance you reserve or how much you are willing to pay to rent an automatic, if you get to the airport/rental counter and there are no automatic lodging cars available you are out of luck. The clerks will be ever so apologetic, but in the end ther is no automatic car waiting for you. since this is a distinct possibility you must decide what you will do?
I'll agree with everyone who suggests that one of you needs to learn to drive a stick. You just have to be creative lodging about it. I'm sure you know someone who knows how to drive a stick who'd be willing to teach you, then find a rent a wreck agency that may have sticks available (they specialize in cars of all kinds that are a few years old)and have your friend give you lessons.
Ekscrunchy: I personally don't know anyone, who learned how to drive a stick, learn so on a lent out car from a friend. The owner of the car was always "in" the cars that I learned on and also that friends learned on.
If any of my few friends, who can't drive a stick, would like to learn, then I'd be more than happy to take them out in my car and teach them. I'd do the same thing that, nearly everyone else did in my area, which is drive them down the street to the Rose Bowl parking lot on a weekend and have them drive around lodging in it and then do the hills around the area. That's how I learned back in the early 70s. We were all down there driving around and trying to prevent running lodging into each other. LOL! And then we'd roll backwards on the hills and the motor would die out. Just start the car back up and putt-putt and jerk on up the hill.
Celticharper: lodging Yes, and sometimes those independent lodging car rental places do have stick shifts, so that's another thing to look into. And there are always truck drivers who can drive sticks and many times also own them. Maybe I need to start a stick-shift driving school. lodging It could be very profitable! Happy Travels!
Separately, although I can drive a manual (my boyfriend taught me when he had a 9 year old Fiat and didn;t care what happened to it) - but as soon as he got a new Porsche lodging I was banned. And I would never buy a manual - since it is just way too irritating in the stop and go traffic we drive in much of the time (althouhg my current car has one of those transmissions that you can switch from automatic to manual if you want to - I never do.)
When I went to Italy a few years ago, I tried to take manual shift driving lessons in advance and it was too stressful for me to change my driving instincts. We ended up renting an automatic from Auto Europe and we were able to guarantee an automatic by paying a deposit. It was well worth the effort and slightly higher price. There's no way I could have driven through the hilly countryside in a manual. We had no problems with the car and we were very happy with it.
No, it is simply not true that some rental agency where you live "must" have manual cars to rent. None do where I live and I live in a very big city. They don't want to risk people ruining rental cars. And I mean EVERY agency, including lodging rent-a-wreck.
I think it is a big imposition to expect a friend lodging to spend hours teaching you to drive and giving you thei