Quote:
Originally Posted by zigzagz94
Chevy agrees with you that there's no profit in the manual anymore.
The Chief engineer for the C8, Tadge Juechter, told Corvette Blogger that there won't ever be a manual transmission for the C8. Only 15% of people bought them in the C7 (Z06) and that number goes down every year so there was no business case to offer one this time around. He said the Z06 used to be manual only but as soon as they offered the automatic everyone bought the auto. Plus apparently they couldn't find any one to build them a manual for the C8 at that low of a volume and be cost effective:
“It’s a dying business,” he said. “The people who make a living building manual transmissions, they see that it’s not a bright future for them. It’s low volume, very expensive. The reason is it’s a low-volume industry. That industry is dying – building manual transmissions.”
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The problem is that there is nowhere to go for a manual car, so there is little consequence to dropping the manual. If they lost 15% of sales because those buyers took their money somewhere else then maybe they would find a way to make it work.
Part of the problem is that the power on cars is so high these days that a manual is more than most can handle. People rely on the auto like they rely on the nannies. Less people know how to drive manuals. With electrification around the corner, even standard autos and DCTs are going bye bye.