May 2009 Cycling Plus magazine (a Brit mag - man, the brits do magazines so much better than North Americans) has their "Bike of the Year" article. In it they test 37 bikes.
Their criteria for consideration is "The best race or sportive bike between £1200 and £2000" with the intent that this was type of bike that best fit the demographic of the majority of their readership. Later on in the article, they reveal a bias towards an all-rounder rather than a "pure" race bike; but that's neither here nor there.
One of the points the article keeps coming back to was how difficult the judging really was. Of those 37 bikes, none were dogs. Slightly different component mixes, slight riding differences, a change of emphasis from pure speed to comfort or vice versa, but none of the bikes tested SUCKED - and the eventual winner was marginally better than the rest and only settled on after exhaustive discussion.
(The Giant TCR Advanced ultimately won. The Cervelo S1 was tested, but when currency exchange rate changes pushed it over the £2000 price limit they disqualified it - the actual quote is "Cervelo's S1 is also aluminum and has a racing pedigree as well. So much so that CSC riders were riding this bike in the Tour de France in 2006. It's not outdated though - in fact CSC's Matt Gross picked up podium positions on one in major races last year. So what's the weight penalty? None. The Cervelo weighs less than the Ridley or the Trek Madrone. It also has a full Ultegra groupset. On the road it was... er, pretty damn fast, bud sadly after price increases it ended up over the two grand limit")
The point being? Once you get over a certain price limit, almost nothing sucks.
Yes, some people buy for name recognition and fashion over form - but if in so doing, they get a solid bit of kit for a fair price, what's the beef?
DG