The critical part of that quote "Like a car with no brakes or seatbelts."

It doesn't seem to have worked out like that? You might as well say "like a car without a man walking in front of it with a red flag" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_traffic_laws

That's a partisan framing. Another framing could be that SMTP is the golf cart SMBs were asking for, not the car they were being sold.