> 2. There is a clear difference in tooling requirements between popping in a shiny 14.4k model (90s era, after all) and swapping out a piece of drive train.

You'd be surprised at how easy it is to swap out weird and wonderful drivetrain parts [0]. People put water-cooled drivetrains into vehicles that were originally air-cooled. People put GM V8s into foreign cars that only ever had small V6s or inline 6s.

There's a burgeoning industry in creating swap kits for putting EV drivetrains into cars as well [1]. It's mostly settling on standardized components.

[0] http://www.engineswapdepot.com/ [1] http://www.evwest.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=40