hi! you may be interested in this similar recent question

• Why are automatic transmissions dominant in the USA, while manual transmission is dominant in Europe?

so the default answer in the link moderator /u/Searocksandtrees seems to be something like this

European taxation also encourages the sale of smaller, less powerful, and more economical engines.

and the smaller cars sold made it technologically less possible/more expensive to use automatic transmissions.

but can someone actually defend that first point: was it early taxation differences which created this path dependence or were there more regulations and taste issues at stake