OP, nice data.
I only hope that it gets through to some of these hard headed old timers that are stuck in their "shortest gear is needed" ways of thinking.
In the old days, you didn't have as many transmission gears as there are today and their ratios were spread far apart so you needed shorter rear end gear ratios to compensate. When you have more transmission gears, then that allows you to have the gear ratio spread closer together and you can have much shorter ratios in the first few gears for off the line performance.
This is where I believe a lot people did not understand the fuel economy benefits of the 3.5L Ecoboost when it came out. Most had the "shortest gear is needed" mentality even though a taller geared 3.5L EB with a 3.55 rear ratio had greater capabilities than the 5.0L with 3.73 gears. Instead of getting the 3.55 gears and saving fuel while still having the same capabilities, they got the 3.73 gears increasing the trucks capabilities past what whey needed with not much fuel savings. This is why I usually told most of the people that complained about fuel economy with the 3.5 EB that they only had their hard headed self to blame for buying more capabilities than they needed.
