Yup, I do the very same thing...I like the cars as they are.
Yesterday I started to do the latest Seasonal Events and I got very frustrated because the gold times now are almost impossible to do with stock cars...which pisses me off.
I like when you just needed skills (pure driving) to get the gold times using the stock cars as they are (in this case with the only one I could beat gold was with the Infinity, which comes tuned but stock as you buy it...so you do nothing to it).
Now you need to know how to tune the cars and you are forced to do so (which is fun and part of the driving experience of course) but for me it was always about the mere driving with certain cars, plain and simple buy them and drive them...get better with what you have and understand the cars.
There is nothing better than trying to be competitive with the very same conditions (as in the GT Academy for example) and not depending in how you can do this or that to beat the others. (though that works in real life but not using "unrealistic" tunes/setups/changes like in the game)
And don´t come at me saying "oh man, learn to tune" or whatever, to me is simple...if I buy a 200HP car is because I want it to be 200HP.
(just in case, I know how to tune is not rocket science, but I refuse to do it)
Beat me at driving not at tuning.
) 
), but I'd like to add one thing: Sometimes I like to tune my cars for other purposes than improving performance. Like an AMG Mercedes that you want to de-tune to take it back to what it was before AMG got their hands on it, for instance.
