It's a manual. We are really enjoy the interactivity of a manual transmission and I'm a little old school in my thinking that a muscle car should have a manual transmission (even though automatics have come really far in technology). It was quite difficult to find a manual car here in Texas... which will answer the Challenger Q in part...
Challenger - We love the look but it was very difficult to find one (no dealers had one except in the SRT8 version). We did drive the automatic of it and rented a automatic R/T Hemi for 2 weeks and loved it. The Challenger has a really nice retro look (which we love) but it's heavy and big in size, the mustang has a little smaller, still retro but it's more of a drivers car.
Ninjastang - LOL. That's cool. The Gotta have it Green color really changes in the sun light and it doesn't photograph well, without the sun it's quite Kawasaki green, in the sun it's more of a translucent yellow flake green.
madjak30 - We had a sporty 1988 Z24 before but this new beast is much more powerful, I can see the allure of a pony car that you have. My "first car" (I bought one before I had a car license and gave it to my brother after a week), was a 1980 Camaro V8.
Upgrades:
As soon as I have a garage I will be installing an Airaid Cold Air Intake, which will add about 13 horsepower and 15 torque plus sound like this:
Nice car, just don't try to corner in it. Arse ends of 'stangs are notoriously light and have a habit of kicking out at the slightest of excuses, my old '79 5 litre Cobra model love to swing its tail just going around a corner and given a tap on the throttle.
The new Mustangs are the only ones I'd ever consider spending money on (sans the option of a '67 Fastback).
That new 5.0 is a serious powerplant. There's already a few guys who daily drive theirs and are running in the 11s at the track at this altitude. That's saying something. I got to test drive one and it definitely did well. I'm sure it'd swing it's tail out but it was remarkably planted.
If you can, I'd also see about getting a custom tune for it once you do the CAI and an exhaust. Apparently guys are pulling an extra 50 ponies out of these things from stock with just those 3 basic mods.
Have owned - 2001 Suzuki Volusia
Current bike - 2005 Kawasaki Z750S
MMI Graduation date January 9th, 2009. Factory Certifications in Suzuki and Yamaha