I paid about $450 for them with ceramic coating which fit my budget. I knew they were going to hang low like old school headers so I was prepared for that. The design appears to be the same as a lot of others as you said. As I've said before, I believe header companies could put out a better product but they don't care because we keep buying em and we keep perpetuating the idea that headers aren't designed to fit perfectly and we should accept the fact we will need to do some dinging and modifying to make them fit. It's the "right of passage" to have headers.