The smallish speedo has never bothered me. In fact if anything 86 has a very clean dash layout. No cheesy buttons on the steering wheel, just gauges and simple fall to hand stuff with a nice cruise control stalk down the side and the tacho slap/bang in the middle of the cluster. Ride quality for me was too soft and floaty hence the change to much harder spring rates and coil-over damper units in my own car...now THAT rides a little on the stiff side :)
Car reports are opinion based, and while Mike may like something less focussed, if you take that away from 86, then you lose the essence of the car IMO