The subtle stunner at Oshkosh was the Honda/Continental water-cooled four-banger, a 225-HP FADEC-driven engine.

As EAA’s AirVenture show seems to demonstrate, general aviation is nothing if not resilient. In the gloomiest of markets, we’ve seen the show bursting with new ideas and products but 2003 was an exception to that. For the first time in years, the show had more new stuff than we could take in during a four-day visit. The big news: engine technology.

We were shown intriguing details about Bombardier’s new aircraft engines and the company unveiled in general terms how it hopes to enter the GA market with the first clean-sheet commercial engine designs in three decades. …