I recently turned 18, so my parents signed me up for driving school. When I showed up at the academy, I was surprised by the cars they had available for students to learn on. They told me to pick whichever I liked best, and I chose the Mercedes-Benz G500.
Ford Focus Mk2, back in 2007. Manual transmission, of course, because automatic lessons were (and still are) rare in the UK.
In Finland you can take your driving lessons with automatic but then your license applies to automatic cars only.
UK is the same in that respect.