First thing first, I agree about a rat bike. My first bike -I still have it- is a Suzuki GZ250 Marauder. I have been able to buy many parts cheap, including a full bodywork, and replaced the original parts that are stored for the future. Now my bike looks tatty -even when the engine has been carefully run in and is well cared for- and I park it knowing that burglars will rather put their eyes in other bikes.
Back to the "quality" topic, I know 99.99% of furniture today is made of wood chip -"aglomerate" in spanish- or planks done with smaller planks. Furniture manufacturers look for big turnout, so they choose rapid-growing, cheap trees, like pine. Pine trunks are thin, even for adult trees, so there is no way to make a table out of a single plank. And bigger trees takes generations to grow and are expensive -and loved by environmentalist-, so had it not been for cheap furniture nobody could afford "quality" furniture. But the cost of lathing a table leg out of pine or mahogany is the same, in the same way that the cost of machining a guitar body out of wood chip or mahogany is exactly the same; the cost of painting a wood chip or mahogany guitar is exactly the same, only the raw material differs. Where is the difference? The same manufacturer target two different kinds of people: those who are willing to spend 3 grand in a guitar, and those who are only willing to spend 1 grand in a guitar. To justify the bigger price, they need to make the quality of the cheaper one lower, like adding to the expensive one two more layers or clearcoat -that costs pennies- in the same way than adding froth to your Starbucks coffe raise the price in one buck or so: they target to those who are price-sensitive and to those who arent. But the difference in price between the regular coffee and the coffee with froth, cinammon and powder chocolate is negligible.
I visited Gibson factory in Memphis in 2002 and it was a regular plant, not looking like that "traditional" artisan workshop. Sure enough, in the factory shop there was a $6K Les Paul, with an outstanding "tiger eye" wood grain. I doubt it sounded better than another Les Paul half the price. Is the scarcity of the wood grain worth $3K. The price tag was there for those with pockets deep enough to pay the price. Get a professional guitar player make a blind test on different guitars, including chinese guitars, without touching the headstock or body so he can't guess the brand, and you will be surprised of the outcome.
At the end of the day seems that everything ends in Harley, but the Milwaukee factory is the perfect example of a product targeted at those less price-sensitive.
