Well, I had a Raleigh. The bloody Raleigh Hustler (steel wheels, metal mudguards, 3 speed sturmey, cotter pin crank), a slug of a machine. I think it fell just south of my parents' budget expectations, the sky blue Arena with its racing mudguards and 5 derailleur gears falling an impossible five pounds to the north. Anyway, it was a dog and put me off Raleighs for a long time. When BMX came along, I never had the capital for an off-the-peg machine, so spent an entire year's paper round money building up my own bike (Redline frame, Acorn mags, MX brakes (F&R), 531 forks), which kept my cycling flame aglow.
Certainly from the POV of rural Cambridgeshire, the Raleighs were never really up to much. Even the Grifters were overshadowed by the Moto X bikes that the American kids used to ride. (There were quite a few Americans around my part Cambridgeshire owing to the USAF bases that were expanding rapidly.) And when BMX arrived, everyone wanted a Diamond Back, a Mongoose, Redline or......or there was one other that I can't remember....
I've got a Clubman project on the go at the moment and was disappointed that the programme didn't spend most of it's time discussing parts variances and showing how other people's restorations worked out. I'd have also like to have seen some of Raleighs howlers, like the Bomber, for instance.