The little I’ve seen suggests that the cost for refitting Sao Paulo was modest, & the purchase price was reported as $12 mn, which is trivial, scrap value. She was operational (but limited) immediately, but seems to have suffered from inadequate repairs & maintenance, starting with her 2005 refit. It’s hard to say what it would have cost to refit & extend her life properly, but I doubt it’d be anywhere near the cost of rebuilding Gorshkov. Smaller ship, though.
Modifying her to operate Rafales properly is unknown.
Clemenceaus were/are small ships, roughly same size (or even smaller) than old Essex class. The small size was constant handicap in French attempts to replace Crusader/Etendard, which is one reason why they were never replaced until CdG came along. Even then, Crusader needed to be modified to be able to operate from them. Also, those ships were heavily worked, since often they were only things available when enemies of le Tricolore needed bombing. Which is why, I suspect, Brazil has such problems with Sao Paulo – the ship is worn out and the modest facelift it got is not nearly enough to get it back to front lines.
As for the planes: SuE, A-4, A-7 and Harrier would have been able to operate off her, all which were long out of production and available airframes were very old and scarce. Rafale and Hornet could have, with modifications, but with limited payload probably no different to a STOBAR carrier. So instead of an old carrier with limited airwing, we would be looking at even older carrier with even less capable airwing…not exactly a dream deal if you ask me.
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