Interesting to see whether the design brief has changed. As I understand it the originals were designed to be quite flexy to be comfortable on longer rides which was different to a lot of of the other Ti frames which were designed to be stiff for racing.
As for where they were made and the quality of the originals, the welds on my Vit T look pretty good, but it did crack around the bottom bracket/chainstay junction (although after a lot of abuse) and I've since learnt a lot of them did this. Think its probably related to making them flexy /and or the craze for lightweight parts, my 19" frame weighs 3 1/4 lbs.