After spending hours analyzing the code which is gloriously written in XML (good for user modification), I finally think I figured out how the built in cars are programmed. The problem is that some of the manual transmission cars are hardcoded into the tutorials/missions. So, if we changed all the manual transmission cars to automatic, and then tried to run a tutorial/mission, the game would expect a manual transmission car even though we are using an automatic.
I don’t know how the game is going to respond to this, nor do I necessarily want to find out. And I also don’t want to spend hours recoding the tutorials/missions; it is just too much of a pain for the slight benefits it brings. Unless of course someone else with programming experience wants to team up; I don’t think making manual cars automatic is going to become a possibility as of now. I’ll keep looking and hopefully come up with something.