I think there is a serious dichotomy here that needs expolring further.

In short there are the people who want beutiful looking products and are prepared to pay the extra required to make them beutiful. Werner, for example.

Then there are the people who want exactly the same product in terms of quality of function, but are not prepared to pay extra to have it look beautiful.
Me, for example.

Both positions are valid, so it would seem that the ideal for a manufacturer would be to produce two versions of all products. Imagine a Croft Micro Basic that looked like a Chord for example, but that cost £1500 instead of £400.