My experience in 2013 was manuals were bottom of the heap, bare bones cars and sport cars, nothing else in the sort of stuff I was looking at. I suspect the latter is what's driving up the cost.
The last time I bought a car was in 2012, and I had to wait for a manual to arrive on the lot. I haven't looked, so I don't know whether they're more readily available nowadays. I hear there's been a lot of change in dealer inventory in the last decade.
