ionic start will always use latest templates available here
which at the moment use Ionic 7 and angular 16.
You could probably create a repository with code from an older commit and run start like this
ionic start "my App" https://github.com/yourUser/your-forked-template.
Anyway, you can still angular 16 without standalone components, ionic start will ask you if you want to use NgModules or Standalone on last step of framework selection after the template.