I know you are looking for well-researched opinions, but I'm going to give you mine anyway.

I was in one of my LBSs the other night; they happened to have a few Lemonds in stock. I'd never seen a Lemond close up before -- I'm a Trek guy -- and I was pretty impressed. I see Trek and Specialized all over the place; it was refreshing to see the Lemonds.

Granted, I didn't ride it, didn't really look at the components, heck, I didn't even have it taken down off the "top" bike shelf. It just looked cool.