The certified GA world tend to be very reluctant to adopt innovations - automatic mixture control, additional engine instrumentation, electronic engine monitoring, coolant based carb-wrap are all pretty common in permit / experimental aeroplanes, but the certified fleet are all still sadly flying with what are basically 1950s American car engines.
Not to take anything away from powerful and reliable automotive engines like the Chevrolet V8, I think the only 1950's American car engine with anything in common with aircraft engines past or present is that of the Tucker - which was propelled by a Franklin aircraft-derived engine. There is also some common car/plane ancestry in the 30's, during which time central European auto engine designers and US aircraft engine designers were both developing air-cooled boxer engines with short crankshafts, aluminum crankcases and heads. That architecture remains a very good one for aircraft engines in which weight and complexity cannot and should not grow in the 21st century automotive style.
Answering the (entirely legitimate) question about automatic mixture control, older larger aircraft engines did have automatic mixture control but it was not considered worth the trouble for smaller engines. The Rotax 912 ended up with a degree of automatic mixture control through using constant vacuum (CV) Bing motorcycle carbs, which were what was readily available in mid-1980s Austria. The downside of those CV carbs is that they have a thin rubber rolling diaphragm to seal the vacuum actuated moveable slide, and when it cracks the throttle closes until its replaced. Not an ideal situation for an aircraft engine, and neither is the close fitting sliding seal used by SU - which originally developed the CV concept in the 1920s. Simpler fixed jet aircraft carbs have basically one moving part, the throttle plate, which is directly cable controlled... plus a mixture control. Nothing comes for free, and (BTW) that also applies to fuel injection.