Dear Nikola, Without saying unkind words about his products that have been sold in the US, I just cannot put Lurne' in the pantheon of great tt designers. Perhaps he marketed some tt's exclusively in Europe that were exceptional.
For the past 20 years, the fashion has heavily favored belt-drive, thanks to Ivor Tiefenbrun and the Linn LP12 and complicit audio reviewers. Only a brave man would have introduced a new direct-drive turntable in the 90s and early 21st century, after the technology had been denigrated for so many years. Plus, and we have been over this ad nauseam, it is much more expensive and technologically challenging to build a new sota direct-drive than it is to do a new belt-drive. Now we finally have a few, in the form first of the Rockport Sirius (a real pioneer product, IMO) and then of the GP Monaco, Brinkmanns, NVS, and Teres Certus. But these are all very expensive and therefore rare.
Dover, FWIW, the motor in the SP10 Mk3 is NOT identical to the cutting lathe motor also made by Technics and used by many in the manufacture of LPs. That one has even much more torque than the Mk3 motor. The Mk3 motor and its drive system were explicitly designed for LP playback.