Teby,
Yeah.
I can do all that too, and I used to sound just like you. I drove mine 5k mi in three weeks in 2014. I live in the flat-lands, and I've got the freeway thing pretty well dialed in as well. I can do everything I need to do in this one horse town pretty darned well with my lunar module dune buggy, what with it's big 'ol 200 hp 2276. Except, these days econoboxes make 200 hp. My car is an order of magnitude more cool, but it's not like the frame of reference is just floaty old powerglide Pontiacs any more.
And the thing is... well... the car says "Speedster" right there on the side. So, it kind've seems like false advertising if the only thing I can do is fry the tires all the way through the quarter, or cruise 90 MPH for days at a time on the interstate. Heck, a 6-cylinder Camaro can do that. A 4-speed can do one or the other really well, but probably not both. It puts a man with sporting pretenses at a bit of a disadvantage.
What is really, really hard to do with only 4 speeds is to go fast in the mountains. To do that you need to have a nice, close "passing gear" about a half step down from the final drive and a power gear about a half step down from that.
All the new cars come with about 14 gears now, for just this reason. My wife's minivan has 8 or 9 of em, it's hard to tell since I can't really hear the engine. I'm really close to that "passing gear" thing now, but it's been at the expense of essentially giving up a "light 'em up" first. I've essentially got 5 speed gearing, with no first. I kind've miss the "white-trash" first.
Most VW guys want drag-race gears, and then a workable 5th to drive home. I have zero interest. If I want to drag race-- I'll buy something built for it, thanks.
I once went for a ride with Terry Nuckels through the Sierra Nevada foothills in his pan-based JPS with it's cute little 2110, and nearly tore the tiny little pretend handle off the passenger side dash looking for something (anything) to hold on to. Don't let the wear-your-sunglasses paint-job fool you-- it's no art-car: it's as serious as the heart attack I nearly suffered riding along. The thing is, he never seemed to be in the wrong gear. I drove the same roads in my car, with an engine that was about 50 hp up on his, and seemed about 3/4 as fast. Maybe I was moving as fast as he was, but I had to really work for it: looking for the right gear (fourth was lugging the engine just below the real powerband, third was almost right... until it wasn't), and relying on the power to pull it out. Terry spent a lot of time in 3rd, but shifted into 4th quite often. He was light, easy, and his engine was just trotting along. I was flogging my car for the same speed. If I spent the same time in third, I shifted later and fourth was often just wrong,
I'm OK with what I've got, and I'll happily run with the biggest dogs I can find. I just know that I'd have spent less money along the way, and been happier if I'd have just put the Berg or 915 or even 901 in the silly thing to start with. These engines lust like to spin at between 3000 and 5500 RPM. Keeping them there ALL THE TIME just makes them happy. I can do it in Illinois with a 4-speed. If I lived in a mountainous state, it would's even be a question.
If more engine is better, then more gears are too. It's just physics. Keeping the engine in the powerband ALL the time is just good business, and means you don't need to build a $15K Type 1 to do it (not that anyone would EVER do such an idiotic thing).