I’d definitely rather have an R than a lariat with 60k+ dumped into it, especially if it’s a one vehicle only/DD situation.
I’ve been deep down the path of no return on modding vehicles so many times, and at this point I’ve gotten kinda sick of it. Now I lean towards getting into a platform with solid resale and doing the mild oem+ type mods so I can get out of it and upgrade years later without too much hassle.
And it sounds like you’d be doing things the right way, but honestly any vehicle with 60k in mods will never have the reliability and DD ability of a factory or near stock vehicle.
With that said, unless you’re set on a v8, the 3.5 is pretty ironed out and tried and true now, and the torque output blows away everything but a forced induction v8.