Back some three decades or more, Bicycling! magazine tested a Klein (the superbike of its day) and a nice little plebeian road bike the same month. They raved about the Klein. Then somebody on staff got the idea to swap the wheels on the two bikes. The staff suddenly loved the modest bike and the Klein became something of a consensus meh.
Of course thanks to wider OLDs and integrated cogsets/deraileurs/shifters/chains, it's not trivial to swap in a pair of Zipp 858s to an 80s/90s bike.