> OK, so I still think the gear ratios on my car are just strange!
>
> But nobody wants to drive around a housing estate revving
> the nuts off their engine.)
>

You clearly don't drive the same as my neighbor!

> 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...


Gears are chosen so that your car engine remains as close as possible to 
the peak of its power curve while under load, and so that the 
revolutions are kept as low as possible when cruising to save on fuel. 
All things being equals, the more gears, the better.  This is why on 
some of the hybrids, you have CVTs (Continuously variable transmissions 
- or variable diameter pulleys and belt) so that  you effectively have 
an infinite number of gears and the power of the lawnmower engine in 
those cars is always optimal.

For "normal" transmission boxes, more gears cost more money, so you only 
see 7 or 8 gear transmissions on luxury german or italian cars.  For the 
rest of us mortals, adding gears for speeds that are illegal in most 
countries is not a cost-effective measure.

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