While a lot of auto trends were based on performance mods taken to foolish extremes, this is purely aesthetic.

Transmissions with lots of gears seem well-suited to applications where you either want to keep the engine in a fairly narrow RPM range (e.g. a track car) or you need a broad low gear range to move heavy things from a dead stop (e.g. an 18 wheeler). This seems like... neither of those things?

Well would you look at that... I ran into this car’s sibling hanging out in a garage in Connecticut just a few days ago: