I suspected as much....
well, the problem with that, is the stock vehicles don't work with ELS, they don't show up properly...
however, even before I modded it, GTA was not very stable... I dunno what it is, because Rockstar, in their infinite wisdom, chose not to use any error logging...
edit: mostly solved the crashing problem, turns out the carbon E7 model I was using made it crash. shame, it was one of the few good models that isn't a CVPI or charger...