Don I know this for you is partly for the enjoyment of rattling someones cage, partly for the validity of your concerns.

(I hope I'm not making myself look stupid by mentioning something everybody already knows!) But if you do really want to make searching for items on Ebay easier then let me introduce you to my little friend - . No you didn't miss it - , minus is the answer to some of your concerns. For example, if you're searching for Datsun 1200 but don't want to show results for coupes you just put -coupe in the search box. You can put as many exclusions from your search results in there that you like. So you can just exclude all of the common items that are coming up that you don't want for example- datsun -toyota -sticker -cap etc, etc, etc.
It makes life a lot easier!