Name one single case were a mid-range pro-sumer camera (from the same manufacturer) out-performs a contemporarily-released topnotch action camera at high ISO ... or a contemporary topnotch landscape camera at base ISO.
That's not what I said.
The pattern is not strong/consistent enough to be believable to me.
For example, the D800/D600, D810/D750, D850/D750, D3/D700 are all pairs of cameras that have virtually identical PDR (I don't regard differences less than half a stop really significant) at base ISO according to the measurements, but are marketed and priced very differently.
On the other hand, there is a steady and significant increase of that measure over time, although this is now coming to a halt as physical limits are approached.
This leads me to believe that PDR at base ISO is a function of current sensor technology primarily.
There are exceptions like the D3s, D4, and D5 where PDR at base ISO is sacrificed for something else, maybe speed or slightly better behavior at high ISOs.
But the D600/D750/D700 were not markedly different in base ISO PDR from what you call the top-notch cameras of their time.*
In order to conform to the correspondence between marketing and PDR, Nikon would have had to intentionally cripple their mid-line cameras.
I'm not sure how well that would have turned out.
Frankly, I'm not seeing the patterns that you see, but as I said: I don't mind you holding a different opinion.
* I'm not sure what the landscape camera of the D3/D700 times was. I think I've seen that term applied for the first time to the D3X, where you could argue that it was indeed marketed to be a landscape camera above all, with a premium price tag, and it did have markedly higher base ISO DR than all other cameras from Nikon. But since then, Nikon has consistently surprised us with more consumer-targeted cameras that in no significant way lagged behind the top-of-the-line models in terms of DR, which suggests that the D3X strategy was not deemed successful enough (but I can't see inside their brains either).
