A progressive Riley

Question

Okay. This is the first Riley I've written, and it gets progressively harder as you go along, so here goes. I wrote this, and then realized that I used a mispronunciation of the target, so I had to sloppily improvise. I apologize. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it!

My prefix is just shy of white,

Yet is almost black, but not quite;

The subject of a show that may be airing tonight.

My infix subtracts the sun's glare,

The black-clad's exclusive eyewear,

But its price tag is, frankly, unfair.

My suffix was a famed engineer,

His impact on transport not mere,

But since his death has passed many a year.

Now change all of the long vowels (ā, ē, etc.) to short vowels (ä, ə, etc.), and take a crack at the final part:

We are those who betwixt two faults are trapped,

The structures that have long lain collapsed,

As earthly we have been properly classed.

Good luck, and once again, I apologize for the unwieldiness!

HINTS:

1)

Gur cersvk, vasvk, naq fhssvk bireync.

2)

Gurfr guerr uvagf ner sbe gur cersvk, vasvk, naq fhssvk, ohg va ab cnegvphyne beqre.

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1) avpugf bqre qnf Orfgr 2) Gurer jrer svsgl 3) 1853

Answer 1

I think the answer must be

Grabens

My prefix is just shy of white,
Yet is almost black, but not quite;
The subject of a show that may be airing tonight.

Grey (solved by Cubemaster)
Hint: Fifty Shades of Grey.

My infix subtracts the sun's glare,
The black-clad's exclusive eyewear,
But its price tag is, frankly, unfair.

Ray-Ban
Hint: Bausch and Lomb, creators of Ray-Ban, were founded in 1853

My suffix was a famed engineer,
His impact on transport not mere,
But since his death has passed many a year.

Benz (also found by Cubemaster)
Hint: "Das Beste oder Nichts" is apparently the motto of Mercedes Benz.

Putting it altogether, we get

Gra(e)yba(e)nz

Changing all the long vowels to short, this becomes

Grabens

We are those who betwixt two faults are trapped,
The structures that have long lain collapsed,
As earthly we have been properly classed.

A graben is a depressed block of the crust of a planet bordered by parallel faults.

Answer 2

I believe you're looking for

Greylombenz!

My prefix is just shy of white,

Yet is almost black, but not quite;

The subject of a show that may be airing tonight.

Sounds like "Grey" as in "Grey's anatomy" This is where it trips me up, because the hint (there are fifty) doesn't make any sense.

My infix subtracts the sun's glare,

The black-clad's exclusive eyewear,

But its price tag is, frankly, unfair.

Sounds to me like Sunglasses, particularly those made by Bausch & Lomb. They were commissioned in 1853(Thanks for the hint) to create glasses that reduced glare for pilots.

My suffix was a famed engineer,

His impact on transport not mere,

But since his death has passed many a year.

There are lots of famous traffic/transport engineers, but few more well known than Karl Benz, the man who made the first car. The slogan of his legacy, Mercedes Benz, is "The best or nothing", which when translated to German, gives us roughly your first hint, "nichts oder das Beste".

So....

We have something to do with the color grey maybe.... And we have Bausch & Lomb..... And we have Karl Benz.....

Let's see how that fits into the final part!

---

We are those who betwixt two faults are trapped,

The structures that have long lain collapsed,

As earthly we have been properly classed.

Clearly, this is talking about the proud Goblin race, trapped between two fault lines under the crust of the earth. Their civilization has been long abandoned.

This gives us....

Greylombenz, the name of my first pet goblin in that D&D campaign I played last summer.

Feeling pretty confident about this one.