Originally Posted by ewood87

no, because it has longer gear when you shift you drop out of the higher rpm powerband and it takes longer to get back into it..

im not sure, but you may be able to take the 5th gear of an S and pop her into an SI tranny.. i know i did that back on my integra->accord gear..

but then when you shift from 4th to 5th, your rpms will drop way down and you wont accelerate as fast, but you will have the top speed / fuel economy.

this is part of the reason big displacement V8s and what not have big advantages.. they have tons of torque so they can have long gears. there power band is practically everything off idle, so they can accelerate thru long gears and have a much higher top speed.

to counteract "running out of gears" as its called (when you have the power to keep going faster, but you are hitting the rev limiter.. but if you go longer gears, you will accelerate a lot slower) they introduced 5 speeds and 6 speeds.. (and 7 if you have a million bucks to drive a buggatti v16 quad turbo)