I've got a Specialized singlecross. It ticks all the boxes, and is a reasonably nice ride.
The hubs aren't the best. I had to replace the rear wheel with a couple of thousand miles on it, the original one had rubbish seals that resulted in corroded bearings, plus I managed to break a spoke on it (the first for a very long time).
The original bottom bracket also went noisy after a couple of thousand miles, that's been replaced with a standard Shimano part.
The saddle is a pain in the arse, literally (though that's probably true of many standard equipment saddles), I did almost 100 miles on it (a week of commuting) before putting a B17 on.
It comes with lightly-knobbled tyres, which got replaced quite quickly. It takes standard 700c tyres, I run it on 28s - you could probably fit 38s in there if you want to go that way.
There is plenty of clearance for mudguards (SKS black ones on mine), I've got a Tubus Fly rack on it which looks really good.
I'm tempted to remove the cyclocross-style secondary brake levers from the top of the drops, they work OK but I don't really use them and they take up valuable bar space.
It sounds like a lot of things have gone wrong, but it has had a fairly hard life - it lives outside in Sweden - and gets zero maintenance until something breaks as I don't have all my tools over there. If you can pick one up for the right price (mine was £350 new in a sale) then they are really good value for money.