Hand brake?

Can't you use the clutch and foot brake smoothly enough to take off on a hill? Even a slippery one? Hand in your manual transmission driver's licence!

[Tidbit: where I live drivers are issued with different licences for manual and automatic cars. You have to pass the test in a manual car for that licence, otherwise you can only drive automatic cars.]

My 1987-ish Subaru RX Turbo had a hill-holder manual, and I think the company had been making them for a number of years even before that. Major confidence boost for a high school kid living in the hills, and learning to drive in that fragile, overly complicated used car he could barely afford to insure let alone wreck.

You can also heel-toe it, but that takes significant practice.

On the Ranger you learned to perfect the heel- toe within a few thousand miles .

The funnest was uphill on snow from a dead stop with no weight on the bed. Luckily my truck had 4x4

I've burned my clutch so much doing that, now I put the 4x4 into "granny" low, and just quickly move from brake to gas and drop the clutch. It rolls back only a couple inches. But I really should put more effort into the heel-toe.

I remember my 2007 bmw 335i had that, but my current car, 2008 audi a5 does not hold when clutch in on a hill.

Do most manual transmission cars now do this?

Pretty much anything that’s equipped with stability control (requires hardware to actuate brakes)

My 2007 Mazda 3 has an anti rollback system! It doubles as a parking brake.

My Ranger had a foot emergency break

They are also incredibly frustrating to drive unless they have a massive engine with plenty of torque.

Honestly, how have automatics gotten worse in the past ten years?

Thank the EPA.