First of all, Drake has 3 Ships, not 5. Dragonfly hasn't even been started the basic concepting yet, CIG just said they would like to make it eventually. Buccaneer was a name posted on a lore blurb and has never even been mentioned to be made yet.
I forgot about the Crucible, so that's fair.
Drake was never nearly in ruins, you're thinking of Aegis. Drake only became a company about 20 years ago, when they sold the Cutlass (built to fill the 2922 "Volksfighter" contract) to the public. They then jumped from literally nothing to being the 5th largest ship maker in 5 years. Drake was a veritable powerhouse in the ship making circles, they were doubling to quadrupling their sales every year. They then realized that pirates were a good chunk of their sales and then decided to roll with it. Profit over ethics. Cutlass is a very popular ship lorewise, both for pirates and non-pirates alike because it's cost effective and easy to mod.
Aegis on the other hand almost went under, since they were deeply connected with the Messer regime, and once that got overthrown people were sick of them. Had massive layoffs, and they only make a few ships today. Hence why most Aegis ships are either retired military (Gladius, Retaliator, Avenger, Javelin, Idris), or new "civilian" models for their new softer image (Reclaimer). Redeemer is a bit of an odd duckling since it wasn't made by CIG, 4Horsemen just picked Aegis because they liked it.
I don't really even want to count the huge ships like the Bengal, Pegasus, Retribution, etc etc because they are so outside the realms of attainability for most players.
Consolidated works because in lore its a brand new company, Mustang is their first ship. Crusader apparently just makes the Genesis, and Esperia only had the Prowler before CIG decided to find a loophole way to sell the "Glaive" without selling a legit Vanduul ship.
