I’d never buy a sports car without a manual transmission. Hell, I’d never even buy a “sporty” or “fun” car without a manual transmission.
But this thing is a beast, and I’d never buy it unless I planned on taking it to the track, regularly. And for a track car, yeah I could live with the automatic.
And I’d be very surprised if there’s a late introduction manual gearbox coming. It’s not like they can just pull some unit off the shelf and stuff it in there. Any manual needs to configured for the mid-engine layout, and those aren’t exactly plentiful. GM would have had to have been working on something for a while, and if they had been, why keep it secret?