As a data point, I would like to see a language much more like C than like C++ (including, somewhat but not entirely idiosyncratically for me, no classes), but with templates and some other improvements.
My ideal language is C but with C++ templates, better type safety (no implicit casting to void*), and with a smarter "include" system (ie: something that isn't just copy/paste one source file into another. Although it would be nice to be able to keep #include as well)
i suspect something like "clay" would float your boat but I haven't followed it for more than a year now.