I propose if you nuke your faction standing with your faction you should be able to switch over to a grey faction..for instance corvus if your a pirate.. Orion if your a rev c finatic like me etc..

MY DREAM IS TO BE ORION!

just set your color to green and only fly orion ships, done.

What I find more interesting is that should you really crash your standing with a faction that's not Itani, Serco, or UIT, there's no way in Hell you can get it back. How come nobody's mentioned this?

We have. Many times. I can never again visit the starting station of the Itani convoys (Ineubis, I think). The only way for me (a -611 Ineubis player) to dock there again is to kill 12 -612 or lower Ineubis players while inside an Ineubis NFZ. At least, that used to work. Even that might be gone now that the NFZ has changed