I kind of share this feeling (I knew 68K assembler before learning C), but having spent ~30 years writing C, publishing some open source software in C, reading comp.lang.c and draft standards, as well as answering many C questions on Stack Overflow back when it was cool, let me tell you: it's not a good model any more (if it ever was). :)

C is specified against an abstract (not virtual) machine, and it matters.

All the talk about how undefined behaviors give the compiler right to shuffle and/or remove code really break the analogy with assembler, where most things become Exactly What You Say.