I was very concise, but basically wanted to say:
1. PR levels may be higher by a few points, but it is not significant and PR of some cars rose as well, sometimes by 1 point, sometimes 3 (P993). So what if it is an ounce tougher?
2. Swapping parts cheaply would basically mean you can have just one set of parts per car type (street, muscle, sport etc.) and swap them to any car needed for no price. Guess this is precisely what developers do NOT want. They want us to spend more time in the game, thus they have to force us to upgrade some of the less useful cars. Sometimes with Tuner Trials, sometimes with Blackridge Spirit.
3. Chop shop actually made upgrading easier. You lost selling materials and street parts for a tiny bit of cash, but now you can get about 10k in boss races instead, which is far more. And instead getting blueprints you have you get scrap points to eventually buy what you need. Ok, when you've had most cars with full blueprints, just about every free premium crate you were getting was a super/hyper part - this is cool for a few weeks, but then you are selling them for $3/5k as you have no more cars to stick them into. Now you can buy legendary parts from time to time and save literally millions needed to upgrade to that level from scratch. So why make it even easier? Noone forces you to use the Chop Shop, if you find its prices too high, in the same way noone forces you to buy blueprints in tournament shop or use black market.
