What we ended up doing was having a lot more fun during horde nights, and the game became more about collecting cars and keeping up with them and building around them than the other vanilla aspects of the game.
Just a "different" type of play. I agree, if you play as you would in vanilla, vehicles help; but then I think one misses out.
I do think gas is still too prevailent especially with loot respawns on, and the ability to craft gas, but blame vanilla for that.
... Each model has to have a wrecked version of itself in order to downgrade and not look weird, I believe they're still working on making those wrecked versions.