darkfaerytales, I'm afraid you're talking nonsense. The performance advantage from the Fury ships is very small, in fact I've not really found any benefit from using them. Some of them are cool, for instance the new Qirex feels a bit better to pilot than the old one, but at Phantom speeds I invariably pick AG Systems, and I prefer the old one (in both feel and design).
On top of this, it feels very satisfying to beat Fury ship users online with an old ship. Myself and DividedXZero were laying the smack down yesterday on Fury users with our HD ships. Great fun!
And if you want to talk purely about design, I still think the HD versions of Icaras, AG Systems and Harimau look better than their Fury counterparts.