For 2, I think it was overly ambitious to think that within a program family so small it has only 88 members there would be one ideal hash function. And If you compare the simplicity of Damgard's design to the contortions that modern hash designs employ to stymy cryptanalysis, it's hard to think that more designs constructions wouldn't perform better, even on that particular automaton.

For 3, I think having a full 7 slides of Bertoni et al's slide deck devoted to the influence of CA-based cryptography on SHA-3 makes it fair to call the approach influential.

Thanks for the references!