Given that Orange don't make their own tubing I reckon it will more likely be that one of the design team high ups (hehe, orange high up, ever been to the place?) Was strolling around a trade show for nerds (sorry, engineers) and spotted something cool a tubing manufacturer was doing for another industry. Liked the idea and asked if it could be done in a suitable frame material. Just the tooling up to do this alone would cost a fortune and isn't a normal process, so it's unlikely that Orange asked for it in concept.
This would lead nicely to why they only did it once. When the process wasn't viable to the tube maker, they bump the price and Orange can thebidea.