While I am not a big fan of the GB design from an aesthetic standpoint I will say there are not many boats out there I am familiar with that have had the same consistency of high quality construction and components starting in 1964 with the wood boats and carrying on into the glass boats in 1973 on up to today.
The multitude of so-called Taiwan Trawlers have their good and bad qualities but their consistency left a lot to be desired, at least in the 70s and 80s. You can find a good one but you'd better have a surveyor who's really familiar with the idiosyncrasies of the Taiwan boats' building methods and practices.
For this reason, when we started our quest for a diesel cruiser to buy we immediately ruled out
all the Taiwan Trawler brands--- CHB, Marine Trader, Puget Trawler, ad infinitum. We didn't have a lot of time to devote to the boat-buying process and we didn't want to spend any of it sorting through tons of crappy boats in search of the occasional good one.
What was left in the price range we were looking at were Grand Banks, Island Gypsy, Nordic Tug, Victory Tug, and Tollycraft. (Victory Tugs were built in Taiwan but not in the same yards or manner as the TT boats.)
Tollycraft we ruled out immediately because neither one of us likes that style of boat although they are very well built, have good reputations, and are very plentiful in this area since they were built here.
The tugs are cool boats and we really like their lines, particularly the Victory Tug, but we decided that we would get better service from a tri-cabin boat. Also the earlier Victory Tugs were powered with a somewhat iffy engine, at least in terms of parts and service availability.
In the end we went with our own preferences plus the "strongly worded" recommendations of several friends who had spent their careers in the marine industry (marine diesel manufacturing and boatyard management). So we got a Grand Banks and have not regretted it for a moment in the last 14-plus years although there are designs we much prefer from an aesthetic standpoint.
So my own recommendation for someone wanting a production tri-cabin or Europa-style, semi-planing diesel cruiser in the 32' to 42' range and has a boating budget $100,000 to $250,000 is to go with either Grand Banks or Island Gypsy/Kong & Halverson.
If you like the tug-style boats I don't think you can go wrong with a Nordic Tug. American Tugs are supposed to be good too, but I don't care for their looks so have paid no attention to them.
Obviously any make of boat, no matter how well made, can be abused or neglected into rubbish condition by its previous owners. So brand is not an automatic indicator of a good boat. But I feel it very definitely is an indicator of initial quality and that often means a boat will stand up better to neglect or even abuse than other brands.
If a good-to-excellent condition GB, IG, etc. is not within the budget here is a link to an article about the Taiwan boats you might find useful as you evaluate potential candidates.
http://www.bluehorizonsailing.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/venerable_taiwanese_trawlers.pdf
PS--- There are, of course, a ton of different production boat brands and styles that I have not mentioned here. Some of them, like lobsterboats, have tremendous aesthetic appeal to us but other than the one owned by a good friend we know very little about these boats.
Others, like Mainship, Californian, Uniflite, Carver, ChrisCraft, Bayliner, SeaRay and many others have no aesthetic appeal to us at all and so we have not bothered to learn much or anything about them. And some brands we like from an aesthetic aspect but have not had much opportunity to learn about like Krogens and (some) Willards.
Most of the major brands are represented on this forum so I'm sure you will get all sorts of comments, pro and con, on all of them eventually.