IMO, the 3.71 gear is just about perfect for this car. Granted, I lean a little more toward performance as a priority. Ask me again when gas tops 4 bucks and I might change my mind.

This is of course untested, but even with stock radials I am convinced that performance would suffer greatly with a taller gear. True, my GXP is traction limited out of the hole (mainly because of the torque converter), but once it has hooked up in first, it can really use the agressive gearing. Also, there is a huge rpm drop between 1st and 2nd. Take away torque multiplication at the differential, and that 1 - 2 rpm drop is going to hurt performance even more than it does now.