Yeah, the emission system diagnostics on many gas cars (and especially foreign cars) is a joke. A friend of mine swapped a Honda S2000 motor into a 1960s Sunbeam (emissions exempt in Idaho) and had me do the wiring. Removed cats, removed air pump, blocked EGR. I used a handful of resistors to emulate the air pump and just spliced the output wires of the pre-cat O2 back to the ECU as the post-cat O2 (didn't even install the 2nd O2 sensor!), and it doesn't throw any codes. On the scan tool, the B1S1 and B1S2 voltages are exactly the same with the same transition times and speed, yet it still passes the internal diags ????! Made my life easy, I suppose, as it didn't even need a tune!
Compare that to diesels, which as far back as the LB7 were detecting EGR flow as insufficient if the cats were removed due to the lower back pressure. If modern gas cars get that level of diagnostics, they'll have check engine lights far more often, and start to piss off normal people.
I think there are a lot more tuned gas vehicles than most people realize. I've tuned 2x as many gas motors as I have diesels, including several coworkers. A modified & tuned gas motor can be just as drivable as a modified diesel, if it is tuned right. When they are tuned right, no one notices they are modified, save the occasional black haze at wide open for boosted applications.
The EPA will continue to make life difficult for the performance crowd, but I think they will eventually start stepping on the toes of normal car owners, and I like to think that will create a meaningful backlash that starts to reign them in. I still do what I can to get them under control, but sadly that's not much besides complain to my representatives and hope they don't ignore me.