Ahh I see. That used to happen quite often before the "saftey" shift pattern was broought out... Old cars used to have automatic shift quadrants set up like this - P,N,D,1,R and it was real easy to go past first and choose reverse when downshifting! Moving the reverse position to between park and neutral positions prevented that.

Well, I guess you really cannot blame a automatic for not being able to shift into neutral, sounds more like defective / worn / broken equipment to me and not really a issue with the tranny type.

I guess you could look at it this way... manual transmission shift towers and forks wear out as well, resulting in unpredictable shifting / wrong gear selection, would that mean that you would never shift a manual transmission again? Or just fix / repair or replace the problem part(s)?

Why not just replace the worn / defectie parts so you can shift the automatic properly, just like you would the manual? Being able to safely shift to neutral is important on both types of transmissions to me!

But then, each to their own....

David