They definitely showed The Thing to be incredibly strong and indestructable - throwing the cars as you mention, holding up the London Eye, destroying the truck that crashed into him, falling a great height while trading punches with Doom etc.
But he definitely should have been CGI all along (or at least supplemented with CGI). Chiklis was too limited in his movements and he couldn't project the kind of charging, lunging power that he had in the comic books.
So I'm definitely on-board that CGI is required and that's a big improvement over the previous films.
(and since this is the positive thread, I won't mention that the design and CGI quality of the actual CGI Thing we're getting are very weak and don't live up to the potential
)