Good enough reasoning to satisfy my curiosity. I hope you'll find a stick with the right knob, and, if not, just add another toggle to that fancy panel; which may, actually,be a more secure way of getting power to the solenoid, since the constant movement of the shift stick will eventually wear out any wire attached to it -- happens regularly with 240s. I can understand that now that the car is no longer on top of that heap, you'd want to keep things as down-to-earth as you can. ;-)
Cheers (for the job you did),
Bob S.