I agree. The argument against car/cdr reminds me of the adage 'in theory theory and practice are the same and in practice they're different'. car and cdr may have begun as a historical accident but they stuck around because they hold up in practice.

As other commenters have pointed out, we could add to your list the classical point that car and cadr are composable, so cadr, cdar, etc. This creates a simple DSL for list manipulation which sometimes is just what's needed.