Robert M. Gary wrote:

In the Bonanza
you sit up like in a truck. My knees always seemed to be hitting the
bottom of the panel, Getting in and out is easier in the Bonanza but
sitting up front, the Mooney is clearly more roomy.

My experience has been the opposite. I have an S35 and a friend has an
M20C, about a 62 or 63 model. In the Mooney your feet are straight out
in front and there's hardly any wiggle room. The Bonanza you sit in
like in your kitchen chair. Legs getting tired during the flight? In
the Mooney too bad, there's no place to move them to. In the Bo I can
put my legs on the copilot side if I want. Time to get out? In the
Mooney you have to slide the seat back to extract yourself. In my Bo
the seat never moves unless I let somebody else fly from the left seat.
When you slide the seat back in a Mooney it rests right up against the
front of the back seat, leaving exactly zero leg room for a passenger in
the back seat. I'm 6'2" and have the seat in my Bo 2 or 3 notches from
full back. If I put the seat full back the rear seat passengers still
have more legroom than your average compact car, probably about 18" and
that's with the rear seats slid all the way forward. Need more? Then
slide the back seats farther back, there's probably about 12" of travel
there, just like the front seats. The Mooney? Oh yeah that's right,
the back seat is fixed and it's a one piece seat. The Bo has individual
rear seats, each with it's own armrest on both sides of the seat. At
least the Mooney windows are like pillbox slits compared to the Bo...The
Mooney is good at what it was designed for, to go fast on little power.
It is not designed for off pavement operations. Not nearly enough
prop clearance and gear doors that are way too close to the ground. To
get 150 knots TAS I need to run 11.5 GPH thru my BO, that's 21.5" and
2100 at the best altitude of 6000, that's 55% power so it's pretty quiet
in there at that low a setting. I'm not sure what my friends Mooney
needs for that. I think I remember her saying that 145-150 knots was
about all you'd get out of 180 HP.