Going to the exotic car comparison, some people did drive them a lot more than the average owner. The vast majority of Ferraris, Porsches, and such are garage queens, but not all of them. I have an uncle who drove a Porsche for several years before he got married and moved on (and this was the early 70s). Porsche tends to be less "ragged edge" than other exotic makes (especially some vintages of Italian cars), but still, people found ways to make even cranky Italian cars work on a daily basis. It's very similar to some of the "garbage" sleds we've seen over the years: most of them could be turned into pretty reliable machines if their flaws were addressed.
That said, I'm not interested in buying a product I can't be confident in. There's nothing inherent to a performance two-stroke that makes it a time bomb, and we shouldn't accept that. Things have generally gotten better, but I can't ignore ongoing premature failures with the 850 (though the rate doesn't seem terrible after '19), the series 8 drive mess, or the head-smacking decision to use a garbage fuel strainer on the Boost.
For my purposes, I'd rather pay an extra $500 or lose 5 HP if it means going from, say, 5% to 1% failure rate. I'm not sure what the actual premature failure rates are, but it's way more than 1%. I understand other people prefer to push the envelope, and that's fine, but I sometimes feel like Polaris is only interested in catering to that market. The 9R is a perfect example: bigger pistons combined with a lighter rotating assembly simply isn't going to last as long and be as reliable. I think most of the people buying it know what they're getting into, but unless they pull a rabbit out of a hat, I may never be interested in that motor, and even the 850 has ground to gain.
My current sled ('12 Pro) is a flawed Polaris product that's been fixed and sorted, at a cost I estimate around $6000 (most was done before I bought it). All the improvements (long rod motor, added cooler, thermostat upgrade, fully-balanced and re-machined clutch, tunnel reinforcements, running boards, among others) could have been built into the sled by Polaris for an added cost of maybe $1500. But between accounting decisions and gunning for dry weight figures, that never happened. Believe me, I want light weight, and it would be nice not to see any more price escalation (fat chance), but I ride on whatever snow I can, my sled takes a tumble now and then, and I need it to stay cool and not bend and break more than I need to save a little money or 10lbs. My "worth it" meter when it comes to buying a new sled over upgrading to a used AXYS doesn't move nearly as much if I can't be certain I'm getting something at least as reliable as what I'm riding now. And that's doubtful. I'm with
@NHRoadking: I'd be more likely to buy a new sled a couple years down the road if they can take what they have now and make it dead-reliable (obviously realizing 0% failure rate is impossible) than I am a 950 turbo with fricken laser beams.
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