Way to completely ignore that last sentence. The cars have a deserved place in the game
I just find older cars to be useless pieces of **** mainly today. Especially muscle cars.
Bar a few exceptions, like the Alpine A110, and the Lancia Stratos.
I see a bit of cognitive dissonance between your two statements - "might as well not exist" and "earned their place in the game" - which is it?
The real crime is that the old cars come with traction control - active by default, and can use ABS and ASM.
Also, if PD had not made faithful recreations of these cars alongside the modern machinery in the game, what reference would you have for how bad they are?
Here's how I see it - the modern cars let you experience current tech like good brakes, slick tyres, aerodynamics and bags of mechanical grip. They make for good racing because they can handle on the limit, slipstream, trail brake etc very reliably.
The old cars - without TCS, of course, deliver good racing in a different way, because the cars easily break traction and require finesse to get the best out of. Driver mistakes are accentuated by the less forgiving cars, so skill is rewarded.
It seems to me you don't really dislike older cars at all - you appear not to like classic, heavy, front engined v8 muscle cars, and there are plenty of modern examples of such things.
Another problem i'd like to point out - a lot of people insist on tuning the charm out of the old cars, with RSS tyres and sequential transmissions... At that point you may as well drive a race car.