I have always loved Singers, but the quality has gone down in the last few years. Through my research of business deals, etc, it turns out a multi-national corporation purchased the Singer brand in 2007, and since that company already owned other high-end sewing maching companies, they decided to no longer sell high-end Singers. All you can get right now from Singer are cheap pieces of junk (yup, bought a Singer Confidence model last year at JoAnn's for $300).
But I do have a happy ending to my story - I was able to find a new-in-the-box Singer Quantum XL6000 - probably the last one in the United States and I love it!