I've never heard of a sports car with an 8-speed manual (or even the suggestion of it) before. I have seen an 8-speed automatic, however. The afforementioned Corvette, I suspect, has the 8-speed torque tube assembly I saw a few weeks ago. I agree that 6 is enough. Basically, my ideal transmission is 5 well-spaced forward gears (3rd gear right in between the weak/strong side) and a sixth as a deep overdrive (for the highway). I don't care how short the shifter throw is, trying to add more shifts is going to make my ETs slower, and increase the chances of missing. It seems to me that we're making engines dynamic enough that we don't have to make up for them with insane numbers of gears. If you need to change the gear ratio in tiny increments, get a CVT. Of course, I've yet to see a CVT that would be able to handle 280+ hp.