Fun fact: this was basically the opposite tactic they took from automatic cars. Everyone loved how easy automatics were to drive. Back then manual gear changes and actual physical steering was hard to do without a lot of upper body strength (and often even with lots of upper body strength). But using physical strength to drive a car was MANLY.

So the ads were basically all like, ‘we know you, a manly man, can handle an manual car. But buy a nice, easy-to-drive automatic for the wife!’ That way guys could save face and claim they were just switching to automatics ‘for the lady’.