From now on you're my BFF!
I could say I see slightly more reason to statement pieces.
First of all there’s the buyer himself. The perception of a company that only does huge series is often rather bad. This is truer in some fields than others. Music sometimes having something to do with art, is one of those fields that get frowned upon for mass-produced. (I’m also guilty of this, I admit. Although I don’t have the resources to avoid it.) Sony often had to prove it can actually deliver by producing some very, very good amps and CD players. Still the perception of Sony as a kitchen radio-clock producer is very high. So this is one reason why companies do statement pieces. You give people cheap quality and they just end up yearning for expensive quality of the same quality
Then there’s this prototype business. A minute and crappy Fiat Punto costs billions to develop, but you end up with a finished prototype that you can’t sell nowhere near the cost of developing it. And most importantly; there is such a thing as trickle down, but trickle up is next to impossible.
It makes more sense to pair your research with a statement piece, sell off some of those and get some research money back, trickle the rest down the production line and sell those in larger numbers to stay in the game.
That way you underline that you’re not a kitchen radio-clock company, that you’re a serious manufacturer that can dance all over the reference field and that average audiophile benefits from this through improvements made while developing the prototype model.
Although I mostly agree with you, I think that, for example, Magico is much more deserving of this type of criticism that you put forward.
Most of the winemakers I’m close to will tell me that top end wines barely ever pay off, but being a producer of cheap wines can leave a long lasting damage and being a mass-producer of cheap wines is a noose.
Well, Phil and Salk wouldn't meet the cryteria of an upstart in this case. Even if they started their companies yesterday, that wasn't the start of their audio expertise.