Low vs high gears. With low gears such as 4.10 and 3.73, these gears have little, if anything to do with getting power to the ground better. All gearing does is change the torque curve at which the power occurs at. You get no real increase in performance by getting lower gears, the engine is producing the same HP as before, it's just the torque curve has been shifted to peak earlier. At the expense of higher speeds and generally worse MPG. Whatever benefits lower gears provide, they don't come free - there is no free lunch and no way to get something for nothing.
A lower gear will accelerate faster as it gets the engine into the power band quicker. But it only improves the performance in the beginning or the acceleration phase. You can change the gear from 2.73 to 3.42 for example and improve the quarter mile by minute 3/10s seconds but it will all be in the first 60 feet. I don't care anyway as I don't do the 1/4 mile racing thing, it's a daily driver.
It's nice to have low gears in town. The MPG is not really worse and it's faster. But the way I see it, there is no advantage to cruising on highway at 2400 rpms versus cruising at 1900-2000 rpms. If you have to drive somewhere for hours and hours, on the interstate, there is no real advantage to higher RPMs, unless of course you are towing, then you need the torque, especially in the mountains.
The V8s have a lot of torque and can run high gears such as 3.08 while small 4 cyl engines need lower gears like 4.10 to get the RPMs into the power band quickly enough. This is why a small 4-cyl car can pull away from a stoplight as quickly as a more powerful V8. I think you can build very fast cars that with gears that aren't particularly low, and still get good MPG on the highway.
I totally wouldn't feel handicapped by 3.08 gear vs 3.73 gears, which came stock on 96 Impala SS, or the 3.23 gears which came stock in 9C1 'police' package Caprice with L99. The 91-93 9C1 Caprice came with L05 and 3.42 gear. The 91-93 with towing package also got L05 but 3.23 gears. These are very fast cars. It's just 3.08 or 3.23 it would develop most of its power or torque at the higher highway speeds, not in the 0-55 mph range.