Regardless as to how horrible the casing may be, the guts are NTSC and therefore rare and much sought after by owners of NTSC video gear such as my self.
Replacement cases can be ordered fairly cheap from the UK. They are a dime a dozen over there.
What do you really loose by using a PAL unit in NTSC mode? I mean I guess the composite output might not work on everything. Most people are better off with Amigamaniac's SVIDEO adapter anyway.
My A1200's composite seems to work (in color) on all of my monitors that support composite.
Overall, I'm much happier with my PAL 1200 than NTSC CD32 ...