"Matt W. Barrow" wrote

And if they spent $millions of investors money and it wound up costing
$200K or so, and then no one could afford them, they'd have a wrecked
company and "multi-million-dollar severance bonuses a la Carly the
Destroyer at HP, and say "Well, ya takes your chances" and leave the
wreckage of the Cessna company to be picked up by Daimler or the Saudis
or something."

You know, one think that has barely been touched, is the design of the 162.

If the goal is to produce an inexpensive airplane, that should be the one
factor that is kept as the first priority of the design process.

If they really had to go offshore to build it at a competitive cost, then
there must be a problem with the design. A complicated manufacturing
process does not fit with the end goal. Surely there could have been some
changes to make the build less labor intensive.

Ultralights keep this in mind, and can be built by amateurs in little time.
I realize that a sport plane will by nature be more complex, but how much
more complex does it really have to be? Not as much as it turned out, I'm
sure.

They did not need to follow the design of the 152, and make it lighter. New
structures and process could be implemented. They did not go that route,
but instead just made a newer 152. So they end up having to make it
elsewhere. Too, too bad.
--
Jim in NC