Stan (and Ray), that is exactly it.
This car started working out for me when I began accepting it for what it is, rather than trying to make it into something it wasn't ever going to be.
Small, light, simple, mechanical, it's a 'momentum' car. And I'd never quite understood just what that means.
It means if you don't pay attention to where the torque curve ends, if you don't get the revs up before you get to the hill, if you don't shift down before you get to the corner, if you pick the wrong line through that corner, you ain't gonna have any momentum to speak of.
The car's a handful to keep tracking straight down a rough road at speed.
The motor heats up and cools down as it gets more or less work to do. It's one of your jobs, as driver-in-chief, to watch the temp gauge and not give the engine more work than it can handle.
You could spend a whole lot trying to fix all of that. You could make the power and suspension and creature comforts more like a modern car. But this ain't your father's Oldsmobile. Or your wife's Camry.
If you let go of your ideas of what a sports car is and try to learn what a sports car WAS, this car has a lot to teach. There was a knack to being quick in those old machines. It was a lot harder than it is now. It took some skills that have almost been forgotten.
But on the right road, on the right day, for reasons that are sometimes impossible to explain, this can be the best car there is - if you give it half a chance.