Engineers correct me if I'm wrong, but to me the 1" clamp area seems like a great idea.I'm not terribly hard on my parts, but deformed clamp areas and slipping stems are something I still deal with. As bars get taller and more leverage is applied to the stem, going up to 1" just makes sense.
I had a pair of 1" Strip bars with the 1" grip tubes but the clamp area was the standard 7/8" which was odd. Diatech made some 1" brake levers--Tech 99 I believe, or you could run filed out Tech 77s.