database latin1 tables utf8mb4 = problems waiting to happen

I just discovered that my cheapo staging server host (one.com) autocreates databases with latin1-swedish-ci collation. I am not allowed to specify collation when I create the database. When I install WordPress the tables are created with utf8-general-ci collation, but the database remain latin1. Incidentally, WP creates the wp-config.php with charset=utf8mb4, even though the tables are utf8-general.

I can manually change the collation of all tables to utf8mb4, but the database itself remains latin1 collation.

1) Is this mismatch between database and table collations a problem ?
2) Why would WP, when installing in an empty database, create utf8-general tables while writing uft8mb4 into the wp-config.

My installation procedure is to upload wordpress folder and run the install. Server runs PHP7 and MariaDB 5.5.

EDIT:
Also, the type of the tables are InnoDB, while the database itself seems to be MyISAM. IS that a problem?