The Spoon S2000 gets a bad rap just because it happens to be slow.
It handles well. It can win the "Passage to Colleseo" with only a set of t2 tires and some tweakage of the gearing.
I have to say that I really can't stand the Zonda C12S. I also am not too fond of the Jaguar XJ220 race car. It in particular, has no brakes, and it drives like a poorly thrown frisbee.
I haven't, in all this time ever driven the Escudo or the Lister. No desire to drive the Escudo, and have never won a Lister. No desire to spend that many credits on a car that by popular consensus, sucks.
As for the Panoz...It's just misunderstood. Properly set up and properly driven it can be very fast.