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Well, let's take a look at this. I was all
set to agree with you until I ran some numbers.
In its day, the 320/360 was arguably the best
value on the market, as long as you didn't have to carry a big payload.
The standard kit was $20,000, and the fast-build kit was somewhere around
$27,000. The closest competitor (in cost and performance) was the
Glasair II which I seem to remember costing about $27,000 for the RG
model. The 320/360 is a legit 200 mph plane.
One could argue that one of the major improvements
(and cost drivers) of the Lancair kits over the years has been the amount of
pre-fabrication done at the factory. The Legacy has far less
fabrication than even the fast-build version of the 320/360, and can't even
be seriously compared to the amount of fabrication in the standard build kits
(trust me on this one). This actually applies across the entire line of
kits, as any early L-IV builder can verify.
Using the split kit ES with the fast-build
options as a basis ($51,800 in 1996) the E-glass 320/360 fast build kit would
probably cost around $43,000 today. When you cross reference other kit
manufacturers, you get similar numbers (a standard build RV-6A kit was about
$10K in 1996 and an RV-7A standard kit today sells for about $19K). A
quick browse of the Lancair website shows that they do indeed offer a 200+ mph
kit that uses a 4-cylinder engine for around $40K - the Legacy FG.
So where would an updated version of the 320/360
kit fall in the Lancair lineup? How much pre-fabrication would the factory
have to knock out of the kit to drop the price to, say, the $35,000
neighborhood? Is the end product a kit that the marketplace
would tolerate?
As for the $200K Legacy, well, if you throw dual
Cheltons on the panel, get a Reno-ready engine with an MT prop firewall-forward
package, and get someone else to put it all together for you, yeah, you can hit
$200K. However, if you start with a $60K Legacy kit, do 2 weeks of builder
support at the factory ($8K), use an overhauled engine (rebuilt Lyc 540's and
Cont. 520's are all over Trade-A-Plane for $25-30K, so lets use $30K) still use
that MT prop (~$11K from Lancair), use decent quality tradional flight
instruments for about $11K (and that includes a single axis
autopiliot), buy basic IFR radio stack for about another $12K (which
includes a Garmin 430), and 3K should cover your engine instrumentation, and
(here's the key) ACTUALLY BUILD THE PLANE YOURSELF, you get a total of $135K,
which leaves $65K for a paint job and interior before you hit $200K. Going
up to a rebuilt Cont. 550 would add $13K ($43K from Lancair). On the other
hand, you could also subtract a bunch if you got really creative with your
engine choice.
Gary Fitzgerald
LNC2 extra-slow build
~70%
engine: TBD
St. Charles, MO
Has Lancair left a hole in the
market place?
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