scubadu

I'm not sure why you seem to be struggling with the concept of price differences between an automatic and a manual. Automatic transmissions are much, much less common in Europe than the United States. Thus, just like anything else subject to the economic laws of supply and demand, companies that offer automatic transmissions tend to charge a premium for them. That is what you would expect, no? They can do this for two primary reasons, 1) they have a limited supply of automatic transmission vehicles, relative to the their fleet size (i.e. less supply) and 2) they know that people who are terrified/intimidated by the prospect of driving an manual transmission will pay the premium.

The fact that a poster above, has on occasion, received an automatic when they reserved a manual, has absolutely, positively no bearing whatsoever on what will happen to you when you step up to the rental car counter in Munich. offerendum's situation does not "change" anything for you. I just finished a rental in Ireland. I reserved the lowest end, compact, manual transmission. When we arrived to pick up our vehicle, the guy ended up giving me the highest end vehicle they had on the lot, a Volkswagen Toureg SUV (literally 4x the daily rate I paid) for the same price I had paid. Mainly, this was because he didn't have what I reserved and they needed to get it back to Dublin (where we were going). Because it happened once, do you believe I should assume it will happen every time?

Bottom line, of course, you could get lucky an end up being given and automatic transmission when you only paid for a manual, but you cannot/should not assume that will occur. If you want/need an automatic, then rent and pay for an automatic just like anyone else would.

Regards