First, on topic, to the OP. Ride at least one more of them before making a judgement. If the second one is crap, then there you go. Also, I have never hit my bar ends with the knees on any of the five bikes that I have them on. While some riders complain of it, I have noticed that they are generally on a bike a bit to small for them. Disclosure, none of my bikes are LHT's but I've ridden them and found them to be pretty solid.



And now, I cant help this...
Everything else made some sense before this, but being from the UK you might not know the true nature of the American HD rider. No one rides their LHT with every single article of clothing festooned with Surly logos. Nor do they trailer them across the country so that they can then ride them from bar to bar. Most of the accessories added to a LHT is Utilitarian rather than just gaudy chrome. A guy on a LHT will wave at most any other make of bike they pass on the road rather than sneer at it for not being a LHT.
Trust me, I live in a town that gets over 100,000 HD's coming through a year. Been hit on my bike by drunks on hogs twice now. They break down, get wrecked by drunks, and generally belch to much noise. If mostly(there are always exceptions)D-bags bought long haul truckers, you would be right. But they don't.
A better analogy is comparing the LHT to a Goldwing. Reliable, quiet, no nonsense rig that get the rider where they are going, and without attitude or BS.