>
> Hi Fred,
>
> If you sold Rotax engines at (for example) a net
> margin of 16% where you could only get (say) 7%-8%
> for a Jabiru, would it affect your promotion of the
Jabiru?
Andy, why of course! I think your point valid, though,
where like there's a Europa kit dealer who offers a choice
of engines. We don't have that here in the U.S., so it's a
builder choice from disparate resellers. But if say that
dealer's price to us were roughly the same, which is the
better choice? Oooh...wait...was that the original
question? :-)
Maybe there is some food for thought here. An 8% profit
differential is not a lot of money, against the profit in
selling kits. And even that margin means squat unless you
have sufficient unit sales volume. I'm thinking also of Bob
Berube of erstwhile Europa here who I judged to be a really
honest guy (not that you aren't either!). So he says to me,
to be perfectly frank, I can make more money selling you a
Rotax, but I'm confident the 3300 which I can also sell you
will make your airplane go significantly faster. If his
confidence (he really should know) is borne out by
subsequent word of mouth, he sells more kits of really
pleasingly fast airplanes. No? Despite Europa in UK's
straight-laced protestations that the Europa is a Rotax
airplane. :-)
For an irrelevant opinion of the 3300, well yes a 6-cyl
should be noticeably smoother. But especially a 914 turns a
lot slower prop, and that translates to aural effect in the
cockpit, my strong personal preference. The 3300 looks like
an actual aircraft engine, and a 6-cyl has sex appeal. I
won't have to explain to "lookie-lous" how the apparent
technical, Rube Goldberg contraption of a Rotax is an actual
aircraft engine. But implantations of same in modern autos
border on the miraculous, as in the unbelievable quiet and
smoothness of my new Toyota Solara for a mere $25K. None of
this really matters, and I don't mean to confront.
Nobody here plonks down the money and time commitment, and
when it comes to an engine choice it's like the choice of a
$$ big-screen TV, LCD or plasma. I recently paid for much
more for LCD and am really glad I did on pure technical
grounds as implemented by Sony, which does translate to
discernable picture quality. It may not even be
meaningfully true that a bad choice can even kill you. Or
how important is another 10 knots on a basically fast
airplane should it be provable in advance? It's just that
this list can be a discerning crowd at this stage of the
game, though well it should be, and our desired airplane is
not anybody else's airplane.
Reg,
Fred F.
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