Yeah, most ThinkPad fanatics like me will agree with you on that. The current business models are the P, T, and X series, much higher quality machines.
Can I ask... How do you feel about Lenovo as a company? Do you trust their firmware? I preferred IBM, as much as a hopeless company as they are, it felt like a good old tech company.
I personally don't. A lot of the same crowd that uses ancient Thinkpads uses Coreboot or Libreboot. I used an x220 for 3 years before buying an x230 last month, and I flashed Coreboot (plus me_cleaner) on both of them.