I believe the "new car smell" left long ago for me, and that there's nothing wrong with liking DT12. I admit it is third on my ranking, below Images & Words and Awake. Masterful, concise and representative songwriting.
The thing with SFaM for me, as I have said on other threads, is that I heard it way too much because it was the first DT album I bought. I still appreciate it a lot and know the songs on it are phenomenal, but it's tiring for me to listen to it. Absolutely personal matters, I guess.