What tranny one prefers...depends greatly on what the person would be doing with the vehicle. A lightning with a stick would do excellent on the race track....the properly setup automatic would do excellent at the drag strip...

Traction is hard to find on these trucks....so the automatic does help in this situation. They have a very flat torque curve...so even at low RPMs there is a lot of torque available to spin those wheels off the line....I've got about 2-3 thousand miles behind the wheel of an 02 lightning.

I'm not into racing on tracks as of atleast yet....who knows if i will in the future...but atleast for the present, I enjoy the manual tranny (as u can see both of mine have manuals). I like the feel of the way the power is applied, and I feel the need to shift my own gears. Mine are daily driven, so that's probably a big factor. When my F-150's motor gets done and installed, it'll have more power than a stock lightning. I'm curious to see how well it does in accleration, with my gearing I am only using 2nd and 3rd til I get past 80-85 (I probably won't go over 90-95 on a truck like mine...). I only have 1 upshift to get to 80-85 atleast....so as a preliminary thought (obv havn't driven the combo yet, but I've driven the trans I'm gonna use)...my F-150 may be pretty fast for a lifted vehicle. 1st gear is too low for me to use on a take-off, so I start in 2nd and go to 3rd after 45-50.