High Cost of Sportplanes

In article ,
"Kyle Boatright" wrote:

Your analogy is off-base. The Model T offered more practical transportation
than the horse and buggy, and transportation is a must have. A LSA,
regardless of price, is a toy, not practical transportation. You won't sell
a million, and I think 5,000 a year will be a stretch if the cost is $50k.


That's the real world. You can't wait for increased volume to decrease
prices. You have to work it the other way around. People here are saying
Skyhawks are a bargain at $150,000? What percentage of Americans can buy
a toy of that magnitude? Price them as though you were going to sell a
million a year, and by god, you will.

Don't think so. You could give 'em away and there are not enough people
interested in aviation to take 'em all.



The Model T sold because Henry Ford made it affordable, and sold it. No
one was driving around in a horse and buggy saying, "jeez, I sure wish
someone would invent a car." The T wasn't exactly a Toyota Avalon,
either. You actually had to get dirty and maintain and fix the damn
thing on a regular basis. The roads sucked. The whole automobile
infrastructure hadn't been built. There weren't a bunch of gas stations,
and Sears stores weren't selling tires and Die Hards. I'd say the T was
more of a novelty toy than "practical transportation" when it was
introduced.

Still he sold a half million $400 cars per year at a time when his
laborers were earning $2.50/day, and the US population was only
100,000,000.

Make airplanes actually affordable to someone other than the great-
grandson of a robber baron, and people will get interested. The boating
industry sells close to a million boats annually, and they aren't any
less of a toy than an airplane.

And despite the Moller fiasco, some certifiably sane real people really
believe that airplanes *will* become practical means of personal
transportation some day. But not at 150k per copy.