VP in a racecar counts for not much, because you can get past the soft part with stall.
On the street tho;
With an automatic, IDK cuz I don't have a soft automatic combo. My 318 car has a 2800TC and by the time I get a few feet out, the engine is winding up pretty good. If the tires slip she's acooking.
But with a manual trans, VP is a really really big deal,cuz there is No fluid coupling and No Torque Multiplication; the tires are married to the engine. So, in day to day operation, that manual-trans car will spend something like 95% of it's time below 3000rpm, in the thick of the soft zone, not to mention every single time you start off from zero mph.
This is even important to average fuel economy around town, because without a decent VP number, you will always be driving deeper into the carb than you want to be; and so burning up the gas. Combine that with a lack of ignition advance and you got yourself a gashog.
My combo has had a VP as high as 164@1000ft elevation, which I really really enjoyed. But with the later ICA of this last cam, it fell to ~149 and I can tell you that I was sorely disappointed. I finally broke down and swapped out my 2.66 low gearset for a 3.09 gearset, which cured the take off blues. And then, once into second gear up at 3000rpm, it wasn't that noticeable anymore and eventually I forgot about it.
IMO, in a streeter with a starter-gear of 9.44 or less, she will need lots of VP. I could never be satisfied down at 124 or less, which is like a 5.2M. Nor even 135. The 149 of my combo is only acceptable because the 295/50-15 BFGs spin right away, and the 10.97 starter-gear.
A high VP can come in handy at certain low-rpm passing situations, cuz you can downshift only one gear instead of two. Sometimes going down two gears is kindof a waste cuz you gotta upshift almost right away.