A decent converter will get you into the powerband quicker, and tall gears will keep you IN the powerband. About my 99 cobra...Those motors are very peaky. They dont start to pull till about 4500 and hp peaks at 6000 on a stock one, so you have a 1500rpm powerband to work with. Getting smog numbers like a new honda civic, 26mpg with stock gears, and making 390hp, N/A (stock heads and cams) like mine out of 281 cubes is not easy, and thats where the big breathing 4V heads come in. But below 4500, its kind of a dog, so gears make a massive difference. Going from the stock 3.27 to a 4.56 (on a daily driver street car...and still get 20mpg and cruise at 3200rpm at 80mph) is the equivalent of adding 80-100hp. It gets you in the powerband quick, and the manual tranny allows you to get straight to the powerband and drop the clutch. But the TR motor, thanks to the turbo and small heads and cam, has a wide, flat torque curve thats like 4000rpm wide. Peak torque comes on pretty soon, and a decent stall TC will get you there off the line, and the tall gears prevent you from over-revving right out of the powerband before you got any benefit out of it. Some idiot put 4.56's in my GN with a 4500 stall TC, and it was flat out stupid. The motor hits peak at like 4900rpm and its really hard to keep it below that with the combo this guy had. Probably killed my valve springs after 1 pass....probably was floating the valves the whole way down the track. But I still think you could benefit from a little added torque multiplication with such a heavy car...but Im talking like a 3.50 gear and a 2800 stall TC...biggest mistake I made was getting rid of my Art Carr 16930 TC. I thought it was sucking up my gas, but turned out it wasnt. And it felt like I lost 100hp after switching over. The small diameter/rotational mass of the 9" TC can be felt BIG TIME even if you stay in the stock stall speed range. What sucks is how expensive they are though, so Ill never be able to get another one. I traded it for a 9-11 TC that I never installed. The guy got my TC and emailed me, bitching about how "Its not billet!" and "I would never throw this piece of **** on my car!" and "you ripped me off!"...guy was a ****ing moron. I sent him a check for like 200 bucks ontop of giving him my 900 dollar TC to make him go away, and he sold the TC to someone who knew what it was. Some people prefer shiny and sparkly over a bulletproof monster. Its a TC that can handle over 1000hp, but its not a big heavy machined steel TC like his 9-11 was. Art Carr's idea of billet is different, but who cares when it performs like it does?