As someone who owns an expensive exotic piece of automobilia, I'm going to tell you right now, it's not a fucking myth. but here's the thing, it's not just about the cost, it's about the shipping. Holy fuck the shipping.
These had an issue with the radiator cracking on the top left corner out of the factory due to crappy design where roughly 70% of the weight of the bottom radiator was held up by the top one. I experienced this meme. It cost me $890 for a poo-in-loo aluminum radiator. The factory charges $550 for a brand new one. Why not just buy the factory one? Here's why:
I ordered replacement wheels on February 16th.
They were received on APRIL 2ND
I ordered mirror block off plates from the factory
They arrived 30 days later, and didn't fit my model year.
I ordered bar ends from the factory that supposedly fit
They were too big to fit into the throttle tube
They also showed up 30 days later.
I ordered a replacement set of silicone radiator hoses about 3 weeks ago and they still haven't even SHIPPED.
All in all, I've spent about $3400 fixing and upgrading this motorcycle. I managed to get a custom made carbon fiber bellypan, shoehorn in a set of mirror block offs from an R1 (they actually had bolts spaced well enough for the mirror holders, but still required a drill), and replace a battery (which requires removal of the seat unit, seat mounting bracket, fuel tank, and a lot of finesse to keep from dropping the little square nut into the alternator), learn to mount tires on my own through trial and error, balance the wheels (without a tool to balance a single sided wheel), replace a radiator, flush an entire cooling system, refill it, and go through all the electronics with a multimeter to find that two of my bosch relays went bad within a period of almost 7 months.
>inb4 you're just a shit mechanic
Nah, I've probably got about 5 hours of work put into this shit. After 7 months
Exotics are niche. Parts are far and few between. Price ain't shit