I'm still not buying the notion that they were worse than other cranks from the time period. Stronglight 93/105 didn't crack, but the soft alloy caused other issues. AFAIK Brandt went directly from steel cottered to Campy NR/SR, not riding anything else until eventually switching to 7400. Like pretty much every one else. It's not like there was some big variety of choices BITD in pro level cranksets. Different time. He told me he preferred the old steel cranks. May have been an off the cuff comment.
Aluminum fatigues with enough cycles. I had worse luck with other brands.