Diehard manual from day 1 here... VW, 396 Chevelle, 340 Duster, 280Z, 1500 GM, Diesel F250, C6 and C7... Sorry to hear about the auto problems nonetheless....
When buying the Corvette, number one on the list was stick shift. We had the COPO 427 Chevelle from new and it was stick shift. The L78 Chevelle, stick. We bought our Jimmy new in 2005 and it has a five speed. Raised on a farm in the 1950s the tractors were all stick shift and most of the cars were three on the tree. The only time I have to think about shifting is going from the five speed to the six speed and back again. Going for sixth gear in the Jimmy would be very noisy.