Second, “safety BS”? See if you can convince your next of kin to have that put on your tombstone when you get into a serious accident in that reliant of yours. Safety is one of those places I can deal with vehicle weight gain. If you want to argue that small sporty cars should dump some of the power features and sound damping fine, but lets keep the side impact beams and air bags.
Third, you’re right, modern ECU’s are a pain, at least in NY and CA. There will be ways around it though.