Who is to say that the second year c8 wont have a manual transmission...?

none of us know anything and yet we continue to male statements as if we know.

if porsche can manage to put a manual transmission into its 992 911 in the second year of production as plammed. Who os to say gm with its vast resources and supply chain couldnt do the same.

lets not find reasons to hate before we know all the facts.

the first year of dct only seems to have been somehow leaked via the order guide we saw posted. If it is in fact accurate and real so figure the possibility GM will follow porsches lead and offer a manual in the following year.

if it proves to be false...then you will at the very least have the facts on the driving impressions of all the automotive journalists etc to base your decisions on.

i still believe the take rate on manual transmissions is too large for the corvette team to ignore

even ford is offering its mustang faithful with a dct in the ford gt500 and a manual in the gt350...

we know nothing...

of course toyota sems to have produced the new supra with the zf8 only so who knows which way all this will work out...

49 days and counting and we will finally at least see what the c8 looks like..

we might even get an announcement of how much hp and tq the LT2 offers...

the general statement of at least xyz hp or more than xyz is usually how this gets played out...

whether it will have a manual or not probably wont occur on july 18th and could be in fact held back for the second or even the third year...

none of us know anything...as no official statements have been made...

could be the 7 th gen camaro will be taking the place of a manual transmission rear wheel drive sexy 2 plus tiny 2 rear seats...

if it looked like a ferrari portofino I believe many corvette buyers would opt for the 7 th gen camaro..

none of us know anything for fact.

 

Ferrari is a brand, Corvette, at least for now, is a model. The market demographics don't support two sports car variants for needed ROI. As for Barra, she's making the hard decisions she's paid for. Unfortunately, China is a massive market for GM and they're putting timelines in place to ban the iCE completely. If you don't have electric cars and aren't working on autonomous driving you'll be left behind to the pages of the history book. I don't like it, but it's the market reality. So yes... she's had to close some legacy plants and had to focus on markets other than the USA.

 

I’m not sure it’s an over generalization. The people your age that can afford new Corvette are typically trust fund babies, have inherited a ton, have rich parents that got them started without any debt, or are just lucky/smart at business early. Exceedingly rare for someone that young to have done something on their own to afford it.

 

I'm 33 and fit his description perfectly. While I could go out and buy one, if I wanted a new Corvette to be the bulk of my entertainment budget, a $60k+ toy car simply is not a smart purchase at this point in my life.

That's not to say that for some my age, it isn't even a financial consideration to go out and impulse buy one, or that no one my age would make a different determination on whether having a new sports car was more worth it. Then again, I also know my household income is higher than most my age, and unlike many my age we have decided against children and don't live in expensive housing. I don't think there is much generalizing one can do that isn't overgeneralizing, but if I were to go one direction I would agree that most cannot afford them, whether you want to look at that as outright or simply not in the budget.

 

Comparing Ferrari, which can profitably hand-build a very small number each of multiple models, (price being no object) to a manufacturer like GM, which is dependent upon mass production and volume in the millions of units annually is like comparing Jupiter to Mercury. If GM could build multiple Corvette models and sell them all at Ferrari prices, they might consider it, but otherwise, it's a ridiculous comparison. Corvettes aren't going to sell at Ferrari prices.

 

Pure economics 101 for the car industry.

 

I pretty much agree with this, but I have a different spin on why ME after so many years. The C9, if it happens at all, will be 100% EV. That may be the biggest reason the C8 is an ME - it was the last chance to implement Zora's dream layout. The C8 will be the last great internal combustion engine driven Corvette. The C9 will be an all-electric sports car with all the weight in the belly pan. Front vs. rear-engine will become an anachronism after this one - for every car. Just look at a Tesla, they all handle great because the weight is at the lowest place in the car.

The way of the future is clearly electric, for a lot of good reasons.

 

Agree... almost made a thread discussing this exact scenario i.e. the C8 is the last chance to have a "traditional" ME Corvette as there is no guaranty for a C9 given the current trends in the industry toward electrification and autonomy. The highest level C8 will surely have hybrid electric front drive and pave the way for an all-electric option on the C9.

 

The "deliveries" that GM publishes are for retail sales in that calendar year. That is why they never match the "production numbers for that model year.

When you compare the last year of a generation(say 2013 calendar year C6) to the first year of the new generation(say 2014 calendar year C7) then those "deliveries" in calendar year 2014 also include leftover 2013 models. A 37,337 "delivery" number for 2014 could include, say 5,637 left over 2013(C6's).

And conversely, if the new 2014 generation is released in July 2013, then a lot of those "delivery" numbers from GM for sales in 2013, will contain sales of 2014 C7's even though it's calendar year 2013.

Saying that 2013 sales is only for C6's and 2014 sales is only for C7's is clearly misinformation.

 

No one is suggesting that placing the engine in the middle will transform a poorly handling car into a great handling car. Corvettes have outstanding handling, and moving the engine to the middle will make an outstanding handling car a little bit better. It's just a matter of physics. I've been driving mid-engined Porsches for over ten years, and I just want to let future C8 drivers know that they are in for a treat when they first drive their car, especially those who have never driven a mid-engined car before. And you won't have to flout traffic laws to enjoy the benefits.

 

You couldn't be more wrong of your analysis of me. I am a Corvette guy from way back, seeing my first corvette in 1953 in the showroom of Bale Chevrolet in Little Rock, AR.. I have owned every generation except for the C4 and C7.

I have a C6 Z06, slightly modified, with more than the original 505 horsepower at 3175 pounds. It's not a luxury barge, as you think I need, and I have driven it on long road trips carrying enough clothes that I don't need to hit a laundromat every other day(22.4 cu ft of cargo space is grand, even though it is a Z06).. My other two Corvettes, 56 & 64, are also not luxury barges as they are fun cars for spirted driving on the back roads in the Ozarks. A C6 Z06 that will do 0-60 in around 3.3 seconds and the 1/4 around 11.3 seconds at 128 MPH is a hell of a lot more fun to drive than a Lexus LC500 with 471 HP at 4200 pounds, that takes 4.4 seconds to do 0-60 and 13.2 seconds at 110 MPH to do the 1/4 mile. Then there is the stopping and lateral g's...…....

For running errands to Walmart, doctor's appointments, etc, I do have a supercharged Mercedes sedan for those mundane tasks. It's peppy for what it is, but I drive my Z06 on road trips. TO DUMP MY C6 Z06 FOR A MID ENGINE WOULD BE CHANGE FOR THE SAKE OF CHANGE. I'm planning on a Corvette being in my garage when I go toes up.

If I buy a new Lexus, it will not replace any of my Corvettes, and I will get a normal 4 door Lexus. I don't need for every car I own to be "hot Rod". I have out grown that, at 77 years of age. Hell, I purchased my first new Buick 4 door sedan in 1981, while a 1969 Corvette was in the garage and my 1965 El Camino, with it's factory original 327, 4 speed, was my "work" truck.

 

They better start upgrading the electrical grid now if electric cars are going to take over. Not gonna happen with current grids in place around the world.

No point having electric cars if you can't charge them.

 

If Mary at GM, really believed that EV's were going to rule the world, then she could be producing a million of them a year in a year's time here in the USA. She already has an EV designed and in production. It's call a Bolt. She could take the 4 closed plants, order enough new tooling(identical to what is used to produced the Bolt), train the laid off workers to build Bolts and be ahead of the game. Since both the car and the production tools would be a duplicate of what has already been designed, debugged and in full production, it can be done very quickly, but she doesn't' want it done very quickly as she, and others, know that there is not that kind of market for the EV in the USA. But, she also knows that EV's are decades off, and they will never fully replace the ICE. There is no shortage of crude oil, refineries, pipelines and retail gas stations, to warrant the need to replace them with electrical generating plants and a more powerful grid, plus a hundred thousand "fast" charging stations.

Spending trillions to replace oil with coal is stupid, IMHO.

 

Of course, no one has ever even considered this before: https://www.wired.com/story/electric...electric-grid/

Good thing we're not replacing it with coal then, and other markets are forcing the EV change. Once the tech exists and mass produced, there is little reason to keep it from becoming commonplace here.

 

Handle great? Compared to what? And since when? They're bloated 5,000 pound pigs. I doubt they outhandle most sedans the same size.

 

GM will offer an electric Corvette before the c9. When the c9 comes out there will certainly be a gas version option right along with an electric.

 

I agree, Joe, EV’s make no sense if you power them with coal, but the future of electric power generation is changing too. Coal is expensive, dirty and makes too much CO2 per BTU. The same plant using natural gas makes half the CO2. In addition, a coal plant can easily be converted to natural gas and save operating costs. Zero emission sources such as wind, solar, hydro and geothermal are also on the rise.

The ugly truth is CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is on the rise, and heroic steps to move away from fossil fuels are right around the corner, because the economics of climate change (e.g. sea level rise) are astronomical. (It is quite possible that both Manhattan and Miami could be 6 feet underwater in 100 years.). EV’s can be a big part of the solution if we can transition to clean electric power, including re-investing in nuclear power. For the record I am not a tree-hugger, but the facts on this issue are overwhelming bad, and will require big changes over the next 50 years, including a large scale migration away from fossil fuel based power,

 

Shut up! I heat with gas. Can you imagine where gas prices will head once you burn them to make electricity for your EV? What about electricity cost once the price of gas shoots up? Tell me what percentage of electricity is generated by wind, solar, hydro and geothermal? Nuclear plants are being shut down. If you want meaningful improvement in reducing pollution stop buying all that cheap, plastic junk from China.

 

Compared to a competitive 4-door sedan like a Bimmer or a Mercedes E or S-Class of the same size and weight. They DO out handle most sedans the same size because their CG is a foot lower. No amount of suspension trickery makes up for the physics of a lower CG, and that is why your butt is a mere 17" off the pavement in a C7.

A two-motor Tesla S Model P100D goes 0-60 in 2.3 seconds, faster than any stock Porsche or Corvette ever made. An EV sports car with an even more advanced battery could make record track and drag strip times. If you are not convinced, look at this VW Pikes Peak hillclimb car in action - nothing with an IC engine can or ever will perform like this thing. See:

 

If Miami or NYC are to be under water in 100years there is absolutely nothing man can do to prevent it.