A popular (and lazy) journalistic toss away is to describe a company as “owning” a market. Yet no company does, not even 800-pound simians like Garmin and Cirrus. There are always buyers swimming against the tide and in the world of aviation, Mooney has made a business of scooping them up; a flea in a world of elephants.
Now, after an infusion of Chinese capital, Mooney is campaigning with two new models, the Ovation Ultra and Acclaim Ultra, the latest refinement of a basic design idea that emerged in the 1960s. With the addition of a second door on the pilot’s side, a dose-up in horsepower and new avionics and interior, the M20U Ovation will go head to head with the Cirrus SR22, the normally aspirated airplane that accounts for nearly half of Cirrus sales. (For Mooney, sales are lopsidedly tilted toward the turbocharged Acclaim, evidently because Mooney buyers are more speed obsessed than Cirrus owners.)