This is the C8 mid-engine Chevy Corvette

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

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.

I think the problem is fuel economy more than power. MT have been handling massive power for years, but when you have to start adding 8 to 10 gears to a transmission to meet/improve fuel economy people lose interest.

I know I have zero interest in driving an MT with more than 4 or maybe 5 gears in it. When my car has as many gears as a semi, give me a DCT or AT.

[WolfpackS2k]

Yeah, 6 is the highest I wanna go with a manual. Granted I've never driven a 7 speed - but I haven't heard good things.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

I think the problem is fuel economy more than power. MT have been handling massive power for years, but when you have to start adding 8 to 10 gears to a transmission to meet/improve fuel economy people lose interest.

I know I have zero interest in driving an MT with more than 4 or maybe 5 gears in it. When my car has as many gears as a semi, give me a DCT or AT.

I actually wouldn't mind a seven speed. I could use an extra gear for the highway, and I prefer aggressive gearing

[serialk11r]

Originally Posted by WolfpackS2k

Yeah, 6 is the highest I wanna go with a manual. Granted I've never driven a 7 speed - but I haven't heard good things.

As a guy who thinks the more gears the better, I do have to admit the simplicity of my old 5 speed MR2 was kind of nice compared to rowing through 6 on my FRS or 2zz/c60 swap car.

However I think if you have over 400hp you need that 7th gear for the highway with 6 close ratio forward gears. The Aston Martin dogleg 7 speed pattern actually sounds like fun to use. Getting into 1st in traffic would sort of suck but it makes it kind of an occasion to drive.

I think Porsche kind of messed up by putting 7 and R in different columns and locking out 7 from everything but 5 and 6. 1-4 for accelerating on the street, 5 for freeway/track, 6 is your top speed gear and your 35mph gear, 7 is the cruising gear for everything above that, so making 7 accessible from 4 is desirable.

[Atmo]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

I think the problem is fuel economy more than power. MT have been handling massive power for years, but when you have to start adding 8 to 10 gears to a transmission to meet/improve fuel economy people lose interest.

I know I have zero interest in driving an MT with more than 4 or maybe 5 gears in it. When my car has as many gears as a semi, give me a DCT or AT.

After years of M/T vehicles only, I'm really warming up to DCT's (not so much A/T's for shift lag vs. DCT's) for the ease of trail braking on track.

I'm inconsistent with that on an M/T car, fine with heel-toe but adding trail braking at corner entry is usually a crapshoot unless I'm driving an A/T and deploy left foot braking.

Plus how much fun would it be cracking off <100ms up/downshifts all day and never crunching gears or accidentally making a 5-4 downshift into a 5-2 and zinging my 2JZ to (calculated, the tach didn't go that high) 9K rpm?

[xdavidx]

Published in Car & Driver today:


Among the many ways the new 2020 Corvette breaks with Corvette tradition is not offering a manual transmission for the first time since 1955. As with any multifaceted decision like this, there are a number of factors. But the real reason didn't have anything to do with engineering or packaging.
Executive chief engineer Tadge Juechter told Car and Driver that part of the reason is the desire to not breach the mid-engine C8's central tunnel: "That tunnel is the backbone of the car, and if you break the backbone, you lose a lot of structural efficiency. With a shifter, you have to have a big hole in the tunnel for the linkage to go through."
Another factor is the dramatically increased performance of the new Corvette's automatic, which, for the first time in the car's history, is a dual-clutch unit. The launch-control functionality and far quicker shifts of this new eight-speed would easily outperform that of a manual-equipped car; Chevy claims that the C8 will be capable of hitting 60 mph in under three seconds when equipped with the Z51 performance package, a dramatic improvement of about a full second.
It certainly requires a non-trivial investment to engineer, tune, and certify an additional powertrain variant, but Juechter's deputy, chief engineer Ed Piatek, told us that those are challenges the Corvette's ace engineering team would've happily overcome.
Piatek said that the real thing that put the team over the edge in their decision was a lack of customer demand. Citing manual-transmission take rakes for the C7 Corvette, which started at or slightly above 50 percent when it launched as a 2014 model, he says those have more recently dwindled down to only 20 percent. (Perhaps these are the same cretins who have been begging for all-season tires, which are newly standard on the C8.)
And that just wasn't enough to secure a third pedal in the mid-engined Corvette.

By Dave VanderWerp
Jul 29, 2019

[Rampage]

I read today that the 2020 model year of Corvette C8s is nearly sold out. There was no information on what the planned production number was for the first model year of the new car. I do remember during the reveal interviews the Bowling Green facility Plant Manager said they would be running double the shifts that they currently run to produce the car.

[Ultramaroon]

Originally Posted by xdavidx

Executive chief engineer Tadge Juechter told Car and Driver that part of the reason is the desire to not breach the mid-engine C8's central tunnel: "That tunnel is the backbone of the car, and if you break the backbone, you lose a lot of structural efficiency. With a shifter, you have to have a big hole in the tunnel for the linkage to go through."

Bullshit lies. They have these things called cables...

[nextcar]

Originally Posted by Ultramaroon

Bullshit lies. They have these things called cables...

I strongly suspect they are not referring to the linkage back to the transmission...

On every "on the floor" shifter I have worked on, there is a rather large hole in the floor for the shifter itself to go through usually about 4 inches wide and 5 or 6 inches long...

If the center spine is as they state a major structural element allowing them to have lower door sills, an opening for the shifter assembly (and technically that can be considered linkage) could affect strength.

Not a defender, and I personally love my manual shift car, but I don't think anyone outside of GM knows all the facts and design trade offs.

[Ultramaroon]

Originally Posted by nextcar

I strongly suspect they are not referring to the linkage back to the transmission...

On every "on the floor" shifter I have worked on, there is a rather large hole in the floor for the shifter itself to go through usually about 4 inches wide and 5 or 6 inches long...

If the center spine is as they state a major structural element allowing them to have lower door sills, an opening for the shifter assembly (and technically that can be considered linkage) could affect strength.

Not a defender, and I personally love my manual shift car, but I don't think anyone outside of GM knows all the facts and design trade offs.

No. It takes two special cables which can both push and pull. The entire shift assembly can be compact and mounted anywhere. Virtually every FWD with a manual has used them for decades.



It's a bullshit diversionary lie.

[xdavidx]

Originally Posted by Ultramaroon

No. It takes two special cables which can both push and pull. The entire shift assembly can be compact and mounted anywhere. Virtually every FWD with a manual has used them for decades.



It's a bullshit diversionary lie.

I think this was why they said later in the article that all of those things the engineers would have been happy to work around, but it was the customer demand that really killed it. They said the hole was a negative, but not the reason they didn't do it.


When only 20% of corvette customers want a manual, I think we have the last of these things that will ever be mass produced in our brz/86s.

[carbonBLUE]

Originally Posted by nextcar

I strongly suspect they are not referring to the linkage back to the transmission...

On every "on the floor" shifter I have worked on, there is a rather large hole in the floor for the shifter itself to go through usually about 4 inches wide and 5 or 6 inches long...

If the center spine is as they state a major structural element allowing them to have lower door sills, an opening for the shifter assembly (and technically that can be considered linkage) could affect strength.

Not a defender, and I personally love my manual shift car, but I don't think anyone outside of GM knows all the facts and design trade offs.

couldnt you just tie in the structure to the linkage. and wouldnt that just be stronger than a hallow tunnel?

also hopefully they have done a vast improvement in torsional rigidity

Chevrolet Corvette C7 (2014 – ) 14,500 NM/deg

C8???

Supra 40,000+ nm/deg

This biggest problem with the c7 auto was also it's sluggish auto. hopefully that is improved as well

[Ultramaroon]

Originally Posted by xdavidx

I think this was why they said later in the article that all of those things the engineers would have been happy to work around, but it was the customer demand that really killed it. They said the hole was a negative, but not the reason they didn't do it.


When only 20% of corvette customers want a manual, I think we have the last of these things that will ever be mass produced in our brz/86s.

I can get behind that, and I respect the decision when presented with candor. It's cowardly spin that just chaps my hide. How these fucks can sleep at night much less make careers out of it is beyond me. Desperate people selling their souls.

[RayRay88]

To the people who said the 3/4 series won't be getting a manual because of demand and development costs. I'd like them to explain why the M3/4 will get a manual.

https://www.autoblog.com/2019/07/25/...ission-option/

This is only for the M cars which is an even smaller run of cars.
The Corvette's numbers could easily justify a manual car. They just simply don't want to. The performance benchmarks and markets they want to encroach on are just beyond a manual cars efficiency. Not to mention very few mid engine super cars are manual right now. If you want a high powered manual Chevy, the Camaro is your best bet.