I grew up with the PAL version (and prefer non-freedom units) so the US version always seems very strange to me because half the cars have different names.
I was helping someone on Reddit get this patch working which fixes a bunch of bugs and does tweaks, it looks pretty good:
Yes, you just need to undo the product ID changes so the Pops emulator knows how to play the game. (that’s the problem the person on Reddit was having too)