Those of you who are in the market for a Corvette might want to wait just a little bit until the model year 2015 will be out as Chevrolet has announced plans to offer a newly developed eight-speed automatic transmission. It will serve as a replacement for the previous six-speed auto ‘box and promises to be up to 5 percent more fuel efficient and due to its design it will have fewer frictions. Moreover, the new transmission – entitled 8L90 – is no less than 4 kg lighter than its predecessor.
The gearbox has four gearsets and five clutches and it’s the same unit which will be installed in the 2015 Corvette Z06 but obviously with different specs for the clutch and torque converter in order to match the different torque figures of the two cars. According to Chevrolet, the eight-speed automatic transmission is up to eight-hundredths of a second faster when performing upshifts than the well-known dual-clutch PDK available in a variety of Porsche models.
Source: Chevrolet
