I think the point trying to be made about cranking motors are that they are brute force technology, they are designed to do a job, not effieciently, not cleanly and DEFINITELY not for very long. Think hammer, big honking stone hammer.
Even the example of a sail plane winch, I bet this setup does not run for very long. Way less time than than one would expect to drive around in a car.
I have a simlar motor at work that operates a mechanical ram on a gear rack, the thing can draw nearly 300 Amps at 12 volts. Pretty much a starter motor in design, it only operates for about 15 seconds per cycle, and it gets about as warm as you care to touch after each 15 second cycle.
Point being, you can design all the power electronics you like for this operation, and it is quite do-able, bigger power is switched every day on any subway train, however connecting it to a starter motor is not going to work, the motor will not last very long.