> Like I say, in 1st gear, accelerating generally isn't an issue, no matter 
> how whimpy your car is. It's when you're zooming down a motorway that 
> there's no acceleration left, so that's where I would have expected extra 
> gears to be added.

It seems your car is just badly designed then, in most cars I've driven at 
65 mph you can easily switch down 1 or 2 gears to get more acceleration 
without going anywhere near the redline of the engine.  In fact in my first 
few cars you *had* to do this when the motorway went up a hill, otherwise 
you'd gradually come to a stop!  MAybe you were in 3rd gear instead of 
5th...  It seems to be that in 3rd gear you'd get stuck at about 65mph and 
not be able to go much faster - I'll try it on my car on the way home :-)

> I see... That would explain the statistic about the Bugatti Veyron only 
> needing 100 horsepower to get up to 100 MPH, but needing a further 800 hp 
> to get up to top speed. (Or something like that.)

Yup, if you want double the top speed you need 8x the power!

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