Thank you for the info, your suspicion was correct. My previous airplane was ATR-42 and it had no autothrust (or autotorque for that matter).
However, sometimes I feel we're talking about slightly different aircraft when we are talking about Airbus.
On A320 I fly, GSmini is available as long as you fly with managed speed. A/THR or no A/THR. If you fly manually, then it's your turn to move thrust levers in order to match magenta triangle on the speed tape.
On A320 I fly, moving thrust levers above CLB gives you MCT as long as both engines are alive and kicking. It definitively can't be used to reduce A/THR response time.
On A320 I fly, there's pitch ladder on PFD atitude display, very convenient to check your rotation rate and pitch, once runway dissapears below nose (as a result of rotation, that is, and not the impending overrun)
On A320 I fly, sidestick inputs are arithmetically added up to maximum value and there's nice red stick priority button that enables you to put your significant cockpit other out of the control loop if you're not a) satisfied with what airplane does and b) suspect that airplane's behaviour is result of your companion's control inputs. And that was something that was rehearsed a lot during my type rating sim trainning. Probably it's a consequence of
DLH incident. Granted, you can't see what your buddy is doing with sidestick, you have to deduct it yourself from airplane behavior, but whether this is safety critical, remains open to debate.
Just my 2 fils worth.