Actually the input Z is much higher than it looks at first glance. This is in fact the Leach/Rossiter MC preamp without a floating supply and strategic capacitors. The concern I had with Rossiter's aXp article was in fact his analysis of the input Z of a stage fragment, which did not take into account the floating supply. When you do it a la Leach the input Z is low, as supposedly desired for his application. Here it can be ~ few megohms, depending on the choice of R1 and R2 and bias. EDIT: and the output loading.
As far as what the advantages may or may not be, I'm not really sure. My suspicion is a pair of opposed complementary feedback pairs, although a bit tricky to bias, would outperform it. Note that this circuit's output Z is not particularly low, really only about R1 || R2.
EDIT: Distortion does look quite low for small signals and light loading. If you cap-couple across each of R1 and R2 you can get the output Z down, although the distortion rises.
This arrangement is basically a reduced complementary Schlotzhauer stage pair. Although I wouldn't recommend using that as a pickup line in a singles bar.