[T]he issue is not age, rather the quality and standard of the maintenance that the aircraft has enjoyed both past and into the future.
Correct.
And the whole rigmarole is just to get a LAME to confirm whether or not all of the previous certifications of periodic inspections by LAMEs were worth the paper they were written on.
The subject of most of the 'horror stories' that we hear about terrible problems discovered during SIDS inspections should have been picked up during proper periodic inspections.