Have you flown the Cirrus?

I have. My first flight in one involved bailing out the pilot, who
botched the ILS so badly he pegged the GS needle. It made me
understand why the accident rate was what it was.

Let me tell you, a 1969 Arrow sucks rocks in comparison.

Wrong comparison. The right comparison is a 1965 S-model Bonanza with
the IO-550. Which does NOT suck rocks. And a REALLY nice one, decked
out and with everything in great shape, is still less than half the
cost of the new Cirrus.

All Arrows suck compared to either Cirrus or Bonanza. Thing is, when I
fly with people in their Arrows, I don't have to bail them out.

You'll forget the engine real soon.

No you won't. At least I couldn't. Oh, they've done everything they
could to put a modern false face on the engine - but it's still
obsolete technology. You set up the engine monitor with lean assist
mode, and it all looks modern. So you advance the power lever until
you see 75%, and you start pulling back the mixture. The EGT's peak,
the bars turn blue, and eventually, about 30-40 degrees LOP, the thing
flashes "BEST ECONOMY" at you. But now you look at the power gauge and
you have a lot less than 75% power going. Now what? Advance the power
lever, I guess. Now where are you relative to peak? Guess you'll have
to restart the leaning process. Enrich to peak and a bit more, reset
the lean assist, relean. And then watch the %power gauge fluctuate in
LOP operation - and I don't mean 1-2%, I mean more like 5-10%.

It's real obvious that you're dealing with ancient engine technology
with a digital false face grafted on. Better than nothing, I suppose -
but no better than the Bonanza with a JPI at a fraction of the price.

Michael