I would not have believed this if I hadn't helped a friend shop for a car recently. It was surreal to both of us that his only hard requirement was a manual transmission and, despite visiting every dealership we could find, few had them at all.

Interesting note: Be very careful about believing a dealer's website or phone description of a car as a "manual." We ran into multiple dealerships that misidentified paddle shift or "manumatic"/"tiptronic" cars as manuals.

He ended up with an RX-8, but that's an entirely different set of stories... :)