If we are talking about how the Corvette team should have built the Corvette the way a person personally wanted, I never take my roof off so they could have welded the roof on and got rid of the hump in the passenger compartment to really open it up because outside of coolant, there's nothing that needs to travel between the front and rear of the car. Then, there would be a lot of strength to cut a hole in the floor for the shifter and room for a third pedal, but that's my opinion and most likely, a shared opinion of probably less than 0.1% of Corvette drivers. However, I drive for the enjoyment, the sound, and experience and part of that is the illusion of having manual control over the power, the transmission and ability to separate the power from the transmission using both legs and both hands to drive....and sometimes, one brain. That's what I enjoy for myself. I don't care about what car is the fastest and if I did care, I would just buy an autonomous car as a computer can drive much faster than I can.
However, when the C8 came out, I thought, well, I should see what the DCT is all about before I write the C8 off. But then I saw a Toyota Supra, and it was nice, as it accelerated past me. It revved and burped with each shift and although fun (Please don't take this the wrong way for people who enjoy DCT's) all the driver did was push the gas pedal. Maybe they pulled back on a paddle to shift the gears. I don't know, it hit me that pulling a paddle doesn't really require much involvement compared to pushing the clutch and pulling the shifter into the next gear, so I've pretty much decided as awesome as the C8 is, for me it doesn't offer the driving experience that I am looking for so I am pretty much limited to moving up to a C7.
Also, I take the numbers suggested about the take rate for the manual transmission on the C7 with a grain of salt. It was 50% when introduced in 2014 and dwindled to less that 20% by 2019. To assume that less than 20% of C8 buyers would opt for the manual is false logic. My guess is the trend would continue with a lot of manuals sold at the start, and the numbers would dwindle throughout it's production run. GM could have developed a manual transmission if they wanted to. The shocking news is they actually have a manual transmission in the C8 already, however, it's just controlled with a computer as opposed to a third pedal and shift lever. Anyway, it's up to GM to decide what they want to do and they didn't want to spend the R&D for a manual. It's disappointing but they have a company to run. Even without me buying one, they'll sell all the C8's they make. C'est La Vie.
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