GM is full of exactly that kind of bass-ackwardsness, and for decade after decade.
In the 1930s and onwards, the cars with automatic transmissions got the "highway" gears compared to the 3-speed manual cars, even though--especially with Powerglide and Turbo 300--the transmission reduced performance on it's own, never mind after being saddled with highway gears.
1964--1968-ish, only the big-block cars got the wonderful three-speed TH400, the small-block and six-popper cars which REALLY needed that lower first gear, got the crappy Powerglides and other half-assed transmissions. That didn't really change until the TH350 came out in '69. And about the same for the switch-pitch TH400--the cars that would have benefited the most from the dual-range torque converter's higher stall speed (switchable to lower stall speed when the car got moving) couldn't get that feature, it was reserved for the big-block cars that didn't need it nearly as much.
