We know, we know. Manuals rule. Automatics drool. It’s one of the core arguments among the purest of the purists. But for GM and its crown jewel, the Corvette Stingray, this dispute is not if an automatic will be offered, but rather, which automatic will be offered. Facts are facts: 63% of the 37,000-plus 2014 Corvettes sold had a six-speed automatic. The rest, well, you know what they had.
Such telling data is precisely why GM is sinking copious time, money, and effort into an updated eight-speed gearbox. It’s dubbed the Hydra-Matic 8L90 and it’s all GM, baby. More than 24 patents were awarded to the company’s brainiacs during its creation. It’s more efficient and more capable than the current six-speed 6L80 it replaces. But, before we get into its specifics, there’s another reason why the 8L90 came to fruition: Z06. Yes, if you haven’t heard by now, the forthcoming Z06 will have a torque-converter-packing, planetary automatic transmission option.
“Really, this transmission was engineered around the upcoming Z06,” admitted Tadge Juechter, Corvette chief engineer. “Corvettes are extremely tightly packaged with the transmission in the back, so we’re bearing-limited in longitudinal space. So essentially, this transmission is custom designed for our package space, as well as the performance capabilities of the car. Our priority was that it had to be able to withstand the 650 foot-pounds of torque and 650 horsepower.”
Juechter and his team turned to Kavoos Kaveh, global chief engineer for GM’s eight-speed automatic, to take on the task of building not just a gearbox for the Z06 and its crazy power, but a gearbox for the Stingray, other Corvette variants, and GM’s 6.2-liter-powered SUVs and trucks. Kaveh’s goals were simple, at least on paper: It had to be more efficient; it had to fit inside the Corvette chassis’ already extremely cozy constraints; it had to be lighter; and, if that wasn’t enough, it had to withstand all the stresses that come with the various applications.
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