Unity importing Mesh as a Game Object Group??

Ok so I'm stumped.

I have 2 models from maya, exporting as fbx files into Unity, both are zeroed out, history cleaned, identical exports.

number 1 imports into unity fine, it's a straight Mesh Filter + Mesh Renderer, the pivot is where I set it to be.

number 2 imports into unity as a empty game object that has the Mesh Filter + Mesh Renderer sitting inside this game object. This changes the object's pivot to some crazy distance away.

Why? It should be importing just the way it handled #1 ... I want it to be like #1 and not embedded into an empty game object. Neither mesh exports has any parents/childs/groups.