Just another addition: When Apple announced their switch, freescale put the e700 quite immediately on hold and during a talk a Freescale guy used Apple's switch as the reason for putting it on hold. The e700 was aimed at Apple, Therefore I akways thought it was just the successor of the e600 with Altivec. Because I think Apple would not have been pleased without Altivec. Plus, somewhere in the back of my mind I think I heard of Altivec being part of the e700 core. But my old, rusty brain may be wrong though...
Maybe after Apple left and Freescale saw teh network communication as their new major target they decided to make the e700 a Altivec-less core which then could better get derived from the e500. Since teh e700 was mostly paper work at that time, I think it is pretty possible, that Freescale just changed the basics of the e700.