OK, so I still think the gear ratios on my car are just strange!

My first car was ancient and broken. Like all normal cars, it had 4 
gears. Obviously, you start in first gear. Once your speed exceeds that 
of a land snail, you need second gear. At somewhere around 30 MPH, you 
need third gear. And somewhere around 45 MPH, you need to change up to 
fourth gear. And that's all the gears there are - no matter how much you 
keep feeling that there should be more...

My previous car was somewhat unusual, in that it has a fifth gear. As 
best as I can tell, the gears work more or less the same, except that 
the engine really isn't happy about exceeding 55 MPH or so unless you 
change up into fifth gear - which is kinda tricky the first time you try 
to do it.

My current car is completely different. For a start, it somehow has 
/six/ gears. I've never seen any vehicle anywhere that has that many. 
Also, the change points are just odd.

Once again, you start in first, and once the car is travelling faster 
than plate tectonics, you need second gear. Then it gets weird. Round 
about 20 MPH the engine runs out of power, and you need third gear. And 
when you get to about 30 MPH, you need forth. At 40 MPH you need fifth, 
and at 50 you need top gear.

Needing to be in forth gear just to drive around a 30 zone is just weird.

(Note that these are the speeds you need to change for cruising. 
Obviously if you're trying to accelerate hard, you stay in a lower gear 
for longer. But nobody wants to drive around a housing estate revving 
the nuts off their engine.)

These gear settings seem very strange to me. Rather than adding more 
gears up top where there's lots of empty space, they've added more down 
at the bottom where there's already plenty of them...

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