Chevrolet Says It Has No Plans For A Manual Corvette

Chevrolet says it won’t deal with manual transmissions because past time has shown that Corvette C8 buyers prefer a superfast dual-clutch automatic transmission.

That buyers of one of America’s most iconic sports cars preferred two pedals was evident near the end of the Corvette C7’s production run, the last generation of two-seaters with a V8 engine above/behind the front axle, so with the introduction of the first Corvette with a centrally located engine (C8), Chevrolet only offered a version with an automatic transmission.

It seems they weren’t wrong, because nearly seven years after the Corvette C8’s premiere, there aren’t enough buyers who would buy a manual-only ‘Vette, prompting Chevrolet’s engineering department to accommodate their wishes.

“There just aren’t enough votes for a story like that, and votes are money in this case,” says Josh Holder, one of the engineers behind the Corvette C8. A similar view was held by the former head of the engineering department for the C8 project, who said back in 2019 that the time of manual transmissions had passed.

The latest confirmation came on the eve of this year’s edition of the 12 Hours of Sebring race, when the current head of the engineering department for Corvette, Tony Roma, stated with a promotional drive of the Corvette Grand Sport that Chevrolet’s position will not change: “There will be no option with a manual transmission, because the 8-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission is better and faster.”

The Tremetz manual transmission that was a component in one of the Corvette C8s on display at last year’s Las Vegas Auto Show will remain something Chevrolet doesn’t consider noteworthy.

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