<VV> Gearing (was: Corvair vs. Falcon)

[FrankCB]

     For many years GM was ONE gear behind the US competition regarding number of gears in it's automatic transmissions.  In 1961 I bought a 58 Plymouth with 3 speed Torqueflite instead of the 2 speed PG Chevrolet.  When GM cars finally got 3 speed automatics the competition was selling 4 speed automatics.  Our 89 Chevy Beretta automatic still had only 3 speeds (but that was my wife's choice).  Now some of the competition is up to 6 and even 7 gears which might be a bit of overkill.
     The big advantage of extra gears in automatics is the possibility of very tall overall gearing enabling you to drive (and even accelerate) at highway speeds below 2000 rpm which the sophisticated sequential EFI systems can handle.  So you can get much better mileage with larger engines and heavier cars than our Corvairs can generally do.
     Frank "likes tall gearing" Burkhard 
airvair at earthlink.net writes: 

Some of  the other marketing blunders I think GM's marketers and design 
engineers  committed (and this is with the full realization that hindsight 
is 20/20)  were the late adaptation of three-speed automatics, larger 
wheels, and disc  brakes. When you consider that, it's sometimes almost 
amazing that GM held  as much of the market against F**d and Cryco as they 
did. Certainly the  Corvair would have benefitted greatly had those items 
(at least the first  two) been on late models, even as  options. 

-Mark