There was one aspect of the manual box that Oscar referred to in one of his posts on our Oran Park trackday - he referred to alternating between 2nd and 3rd gears - in some sections, it would overrev in 2nd, but then 3rd be too tall to be of any real benefit.
Some couple of years ago, I mentioned the idiosyncracy of the manual box ratios. My experience related to driving a V8 (350) Coupe that had the four sspeed manual. I would daresay that the box was more than likely of a design that would more than likely have its origins going back to the fifties.
Cars and engines were different then, and the mechanicals had to cope with European driving conditions which, of course, included mountain regions. What I found driving the Coupe was that first gear was practically useless, so you'd start in 2nd. Then when the time came to change up to third, in slowish traffic the engine lacked torque to a certain extent to pull the higher gear properly. I mean, it'd handle it okay, but there was no real acceleration - unless you went down a cog to 2nd.
I struck this very same situation when in Europe recently with a 4cyl. 1.9 Diesel Citroen Xsara. Going up a mountain pass to the Grossglockner (2400m), it was a continuous serpentine climb for about 22 kilometers. Back to 2nd approaching the hair pin, revving hard to pick up speed, change up to third and......nothing, no torque, with engine struggling to maintain speed - quite often, this necessitated a change back to 2nd and a repeat of the previous experience - very frustrating. Just my learned thoughts. Styria