Don is correct again... just about anything can be done, it is just a matter of trading weight, performance, cost, complexity, etc. and ending up with a good product at the end of the day. Realistically, RG for planes cruising under 200 knots doesn't pencil-out IMO against a well-designed and faired FG arrangement, as Cirrus and Lancair have demonstrated. Lots of us would love an RG version of those since we're used to legacy planes like Bonanzas and Mooneys, but I feel they made the best decision for the modern market (including the buyer/pilot and the current FAA climate!). The faster you go of course, the much bigger the drag impact is, which is why you'll likely never find a FG bizjet.

Honestly, though, once you're inside the plane flying it somewhere, the only thing that matters is the performance and not where the gear is riding... If I had a choice of 5 KTAS of cruise performance vs. 50-75 lbs of additional payload for the RG/FG debate, I would likely choose the payload option. However, when we get nice aerial photos of our planes, I'll concede having the gear sticking out in the midst of a beautiful undercast at sunset just looks stupid.

The Premier definitely had a metal wing. The new Lear 85 has a composite wing and RG. Time will tell about how successful it might be in the market... it is late and heavy, much like the Premier and Horizon were when they were finally born across town...

The Piper Saratoga was for a time available as both an RG and a fixed gear airplane with the same wing, engine, etc. 8Kts difference in high speed cruise.

With better modeling, and the fact that the Cirrus is still fairly slow/low drag at a speed under 200Kias, I find the 5Kt speed difference completely believable.

I usually think Jason's sense of smell is pretty good but I don't believe the 5Kt difference is a marketing conspiracy.

A big difference between the two planes is the cooling drag. While both have slick air frames, Cirrus has much lower cooling drag than the 50 year old Bonanza cooling design. I have seen estimates that on a Bonanza the cooling drag makes up 30+% over overall drag. It is the cooling design where Cirrus makes up most of the fixed gear drag.

That settles it. We need a taildragger Cirrus. Will look cool without the complexity and weight of a retract. Perhaps they could even install a secondary chute to deploy in the event of a ground loop

As an almost-related post, the total drag coefficient for the Navion, with its gear stowed, is almost identical to a Bonanza with the gear hanging out.
Robin

So who would be interested in a new composite Beechcraft V tail with fixed gear if they designed one and it was 15-20 tks faster than a Cirrus? I'm talking about a clean sheet design. 2 door, 5 seater like the cirrus? Plus points if they were able to retain some of the styling/design cues from original fuselage...

no

You don't count now that you burn Jet A . It'd be like going from a flat screen tv to a black and white 13" tube tv for you

I'm not flying a fixed gear anything (unless it's a tail wheel). Airplanes are meant to look good. You can't do that with a tricycle landing gear sticking out the bottom of the plane.

What you are describing is the Cirrus Vision Jet.

You missed the "fixed gear" part. Vision jet is not fixed gear.

I don't like fixed gear.

So who is it that is looking at the airplane in cruise? The Bonanza gear is down on approach, landing, and TO.

Jason has his cellphone attached to the wingtip so he can take selfies during flight

The glorious art that is the Bonanza's gear-retraction monkey-motion... inner doors open, gear goes up, inner doors close up tight... That's gotta count for something...