Setting style of UITableViewCell when using iOS 6 UITableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:forIndexPath:

I know you said you didn’t want to create a subclass, but it looks inevitable. Based on the assembly code while testing in the iOS 6.0 simulator, UITableView creates new instances of UITableViewCell (or its subclasses) by performing

[[<RegisteredClass> alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleDefault reuseIdentifier:<ReuseIdentifier>]

In other words, the style sent (UITableViewCellStyleDefault) appears to be hard-coded. To get around this, you will need to create a subclass that overrides the default initializer initWithStyle:reuseIdentifier: and passes the style you wish to use:

- (id)initWithStyle:(UITableViewCellStyle)style reuseIdentifier:(NSString *)reuseIdentifier
{
    // ignore the style argument, use our own to override
    self = [super initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleValue1 reuseIdentifier:reuseIdentifier];
    if (self) {
        // If you need any further customization
    }
    return self;
}

Also, it might be better to send registerClass:forCellReuseIdentifier: in viewDidLoad, instead of doing it every time a cell is requested:

- (void)viewDidLoad
{
    [super viewDidLoad];
    [self.tableView registerClass:<RegisteredClass> forCellReuseIdentifier:<ReuseIdentifier>];
}