Under the old rules of aircraft design, to go fast, you tucked the wheels into the belly and hung a largish engine on the front of the airplane. To a degree, Cirrus, Lancair and Diamond have rewritten that equation by building slick airframes with fixed gear that doesn’t need to be retracted to allow respectable cruise speeds. That’s a plus, of course, because fixed gear is more reliable and cheaper to maintain.

But only a fraction of would-be owners of fast cruisers can afford a new Cirrus or Lancair and even some who can choose not to tie up the better part of a half-million bucks in an airplane. For those…