No I would not whine. Most manual transmission cars are geared wrong in my opionion from the factory. With an automatic transmission, go ahead and gear it as tall as it can handle. It will pop out when it needs to. With a manual transmission, the highest gear should provide enough torque to allow the car to maintain speed on flat to low grade hills. 5th in my Solara will allow me to accellerate up sizable hills. All that means is that I am wasting gas all the other times when I am on level road. If it were geared right, you should not need to push it to the floor to drive accross flat road. There is so little rolling resistance in the car, I bet it could handle a 20% increase from 5th to 6th and still be very drivable. There is nothing wrong with having to pull a car out of its high gear to either accelerate or climb a steep hill. If are driving thru a hilly area, just leave it in the second highest gear. Shifting up for a small flat area is not manadatory.
I drove my moms Honda Odyssey a month ago. It turned around 2200 at
70 mph. As we got toward the beach, it held its highest gear longer and it had plenty of torque to move that big vehicle at highway speed.
If gas gets more expensive, they will gear cars taller to save gas. They did it in the 80's, and it could happen again. Or maybe they will jsut give you more gears.
Scot