[PODCAST] Tony Roma was on The Drivecast and He Talks C8, C9, Manuals, Z06X, and More

Corvette Executive Chief Engineer Tony Roma sat down with Joel and Kyle of The Drive for nearly an hour as the Corvette chief gave a wide-ranging interview that touches on many of the things that Corvettes enthusiasts care about. In addition to some of the standard questions that have to be asked, it was also nice that we got some additional answers about some other topics as well, such as the naming change with the X-cars and the decision not to go back to the Nürburgring with the ZR1/ZR1X.

Also, there is some discussion of the Cadillac Blackwing and Camaro for fans of those cars as well.

The Drivecast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Amazon Music. Plus, they also dropped the full transcript at The Drive if you prefer to read.

There’s a lot to unpack here and the reality is that it would be tough covering so much of what Tony discusses here in just one post. So, we really encourage you to either listen to the podcast or read the transcript for the full effect.

However, we did want to highlight these two answers which I think is something that Corvette enthusiasts are interested in and that’s the direction of the upcoming C9 Corvette. The set-up for the question was very good as well as it alludes to the C9 being Tony’s first clean-sheet Corvette generation while the C8 was the domain of Tadge Juechter who retired in 2024. The question was “What does a C9 need to be, and more importantly, what can’t it be?”

TONY ROMA: Ooh, that’s an interesting way to come at it. The C9 needs to be a Corvette at its core. It needs to have value; we would obviously try to improve the performance over the C8, and that goes to the value offer the customer something more than what they have in their current car. Beyond that, yeah, obviously I’d be talking a lot of inside baseball if I went further than that. What it can’t be: more expensive just to use technology for technology’s sake. Even though we’re a mid-engine car now, there’s a lot of people that think that means we need to go chase Lamborghini and Ferrari tit-for-tat, and that’s not the core of what a Corvette is. We just happened to move the engine to the back for reasons based in first-principle physics, right, of putting the weight over the drive wheels, and I think all the performance metrics show the car is just faster, better. We were able to maintain the ride comfort that people came to expect from all the previous generation Corvettes. So yeah, you can expect we’ll just do what we do, only better, newer, faster.

The follow-up to this answer then dives into the manual transmission question as Joel tells how at Pebble Beach this year there was a resurgence of supercars with manual transmissions. “Does a future Corvette need to bring back a manual transmission?”

For his answer, Tony talks about a concept of “luxury” as having something your competitor doesn’t have, and he gives an example of when everyone had a manual transmission and then Ferrari comes out with an F1-shifted automated manual. The point was that the Ferrari had something nobody else had, which was a luxury for some buyers. Now that everyone has automatic DCTs, having three pedals means that “mine’s cooler than yours, I can have something you can’t have,” says the Corvette Chief. Tony goes on to say how much he enjoys manual-shifting cars, especially those found in his classic cars like his ’66 Corvette. The development costs would still be high, and he is unsure whether it would still make sense to develop.

Tony Roma: Yeah, it’s an interesting timeline, although let me give you my theory because I think as far as being able to predict it, there’s a certain amount of luxury that is “I can have something you can’t have.” That means luxury to some people, right? And so when everybody else had manual transmissions, luxury meant the first Ferrari F1-shifted automated manuals and some of the things those competitors were doing. That meant “Look, mine’s cooler than yours, I can have something you can’t have.” Now that most of the mainstream market’s gone DCT or otherwise, now it’s the other way. “Oh, well, you’re not cool, mine’s got three pedals, yours doesn’t.” You know, so we don’t look at it from that perspective. You don’t do it just because you can, you do it because it makes the car better. Now, there’s a visceral engagement that comes with three pedals and a true manual transmission. I think I did the math for somebody: all of my hot rods, my ’66 Corvette’s a manual, I’ve got a bunch of old cars and they’re all manuals, and there’s a reason for that. And I’ve talked about, I’ve gotten in trouble for some of the things I’ve said about Corvettes—not in trouble, but I’ve gone too far in some of the things I’ve said. I love manual transmissions, I would love to do it. And again, I’m like a broken record, it comes back to transmissions are super expensive. When we had C5, C6, and C7, we could use basically the same manual transmission architecture that had been around and slowly developed over like 30 years, and it was mostly paid for and we were doing slight upgrades on it and it cost reasonable amounts of money to keep it in production. We moved the engine to the back, we’ve now got this transaxle that’s fantastic, it can handle an insane amount of torque from an LT7, and so now I’d have to go develop something all new. And that’s tricky because the proportions of the car are based around from the front of the engine is right up against the back of the front seats to the centerline of the axle means there’s nothing in the world to buy, I have to go make one, and that’s a really, really expensive thing. So, the short answer is I don’t know. I would love it as a driver, as a customer, I would love it. I just don’t know if we can make it make sense. And again, I keep giving you guys disappointing answers, I’m sorry.

For those thinking back to the earlier controversy after TREMEC announced their development of a 6-speed manual at SEMA in 2025 that would “drop right into a C8,” Kyle asked Tony about what he meant when he was quoted saying he wish they hadn’t done that. He answered that what he really meant to say was that he wished they wouldn’t have made it sound so easy. “Oh look, this could drop right in and you could do this,” says Tony as he suggests that if it’s so easy, where’s the working prototype with that transmission?

I am sure we’ll have some more here from Tony’s appearance on this podcast, but I really wanted to highlight those points in the conversation to start with. You can read the entire transcript at TheDrive.com or search for The Drivecast wherever you listen to podcasts.

Source:
TheDrive

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