I think trying to divide G1 up is so full of quandaries that it's a process that can do little but lead to madness. See the attempts by Takara to make everything up until Car Robots one continuity -
here and
here
What are the defining criteria that you're using to classify? Is it cartoon, comic, origin, toy style? Do we count the Gold Box reissues as early G1 when they were released closer to Action Master times? The western comics appeared to do a decent job of just saying "they all exist" and just get on with story telling so there was no real need to divide the timeline up.
Do we class Headmasters with S3, because that makes sense from a cartoon narrative and alt mode style, but then what do we do about Pretenders and the second round of Targetmasters?
I think the benefits of the subdivision you outline above are less beneficial, because the fan that knows enough about the various releases knows about the confusion between G1 yellow and G2 constructicons so knows the tell tale signs to look for. (Case in point - I know a lot of otherwise useless bits of information about Transformers, and I didn't even know that there were G2 constructicons that combined)
There are just so many ways to slice the cake that everyone is going to have their unique preference that trying to divide it into three neat divisions is not realistic.