Manuals are my favorite, but I never traded a car off so quickly as when I had to sit in DC area traffic during my commute while stationed there. Impossible to overstate how annoying it is to ride a clutch pedal and first gear for an hour and a half straight.
I'd love to trade my 2019 Tundra for a low mileage Dodge Cummins like Rip suggests. They do sell kits where you can control how the diesel runs. The top setting performs almost identically to the new diesels with all of the extra crap on them, but with the flick of a switch you can get whatever you need for serious towing or overlanding.
That's the tyranny with living in the South, though. All the good trucks are taken.