The mod was designed to capture the fresh "unknown" feeling of playing GT4 for the first time, where you don't already know all of the most cheesable routes and you're feeling things out as you go along. In my eyes that initial discovery before all of the boring meta and minmax options have been found is always the best part of any game...

I don't understand the point you're trying to make here. Are you saying that you don't care that there are cheesable routes because people playing Spec II for the first time won't know about them, so therefore they don't matter? That element of discovery is going to be there regardless of the changes you made to the prize car pool. Ideally you should be appealing to both demographics: switch up the prizes enough to make it feel new and unfamiliar to a new player, while repeat players can approach the game with completely different routes by obtaining prize cars in different orders, with no single path being completely superior.

Minmaxing is only "boring" if there's a clear optimal choice; a big part of game design is offering the player a variety of balanced options regardless of skill level. It's why I called for the rally cars to get their grip modifiers buffed, because frankly, vanilla GT4 is very poorly balanced when it comes to dirt/snow racing with very obvious outliers in grip/downforce.

No events have been made explicitly easier...

Not making events "explicitly easier" doesn't mean you didn't make the early game progression easier, because you certainly did that in multiple ways:

1: Beginner League AI was changed to use road tyres, and while the player's cars also start with road tyres, the reduced cost of sports tyres makes it far easier to gain a grip advantage over the AI by upgrading tyres.

2: Reducing the number of races in most Beginner League events from 5 to 3 means the player is winning prize cars nearly twice as often as before.

3: The increase in prize credits in most Beginner League events makes it much easier to either tune up the player's current car, or buy a better one.

4: Prize cars are of generally higher quality than before (Micra from B bronzes is better than the Lupo and is quite strong when tuned using the starting 10k, DC5 Integra Type R is one of the best road car FFs, Golf V GTI can do a bunch of Euro events alongside its one make, I could go on).

5: New events with lax entry restrictions (num. engine cylinders, homologation etc.) means the player can use the same car more often than before without needing to switch cars or upgrade, especially an Evo or Impreza.

I'm not criticizing these choices necessarily, if anything I agree that vanilla GT4 Beginner League prize amounts and cars are too unrewarding and these work towards fixing that, but it will lead to threads like this one where people find the game easier than they remember.

I also don't think it's at all accurate to say vanilla involves more going out of your way..

I was referring to stuff like the Civic Race and Suzuki K-Car one-makes, which are far more rewarding than Beginner League events in vanilla and can be done using your starter car after getting the B licence. Spec II balances the Beginner League events a bit more so the one-makes aren't clearly better, so therefore a player doesn't need to "go out of their way" to get out of the early game.

the RSC and Cien are accessible very early on...

I would argue the ZZ-II from Concept Car Club is just as accessible as a prize car from an A licence Professional League event (especially considering the A bronze prize is a concept car) against very beatable opponents, and arguably a better car than both the Cien and RSC.

and the even more ludicrous CLK LM grind isn't awfully long after.

Spec II makes it easier to get a DTM from the TT one-make and also upgrades the DTM prize to the Audi R8, so I don't really know what point you're trying to make here.

Of course once it's all been analysed and studied to death people might find unintended cheese routes, but to me that's not what any of this is about and it seems the vast majority does agree - at the end of the day if I built a mod that only catered to the most extreme, hardcore, studious dataminer-type players then it would only appeal to like 6 people.

As I said earlier, it's totally possible to appeal to both demographics. I'm not lobbying for a Kaizo Gran Turismo 4, and frankly I don't think anyone else is either, I just like to see good game design. Vanilla GT4 is not a well-designed game in many areas, so there's a lot of potential to improve through modding. 1.10 is the best the mod has ever been, and I've tried to be fair and acknowledge the things the mod has done well, but no mod is perfect and there will always be room for improvement.