re: Strictly anecodotal, but...
Of course, people don't buy Rolls Royces for their reliability, nor Ferraris or Lamborghinis, etc. though for the price, reliability should be automatic. Exclusivity and prestige are the selling points, and high price is actuallly a plus. Like hi-fi equiipment - one can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on tube amps and turntables that play vinyl analog records and exotic speakers and the sound will be a fraction of a percent better than from a system costing a thousand dollars - but with the former, you can tell your friends that you spent $4000 for a phono cartridge and a million dollars for a set of speakers.