Arlen, I felt the same way.
I would fire the whole lot of them who were working the booth.
I was there at 8:58. By their store, looking to buy some logo merchandise. It was roped off. “She is not here yet. Can you come back at 10:00 or so” no, I can not.

...

those days are long gone and the people who built in beechcraft quality are long dead

Check out a recent build G36 and look at how the doors (don't) fit. Crawl up in the wheel wells and look around with a mirror. Check the rivet heads that aren't easy to see.

Cirrus aces new Beech pistons in any quality metric you can think of.

No doubt early Cirrus were poor workmanship. But today?
Might as well compare an aluminum boat with rivets to a fiberglass one. No comparison. No doubt old metal workers were put out of business. Adapt or die.

Beech rivet lines USED to be laser straight.

I was appalled at what I saw on the G36 fuselage at SnF last April. Any EAA homebuilder would be ashamed to have anything like that.

Mooney has been on life support for over a decade. Owners are lucky the Chinese investors are bad at math.

They've made a few improvements (second door), but it's essentially the same long body design for the last 25 years. The new models they tried to launch are nowhere to be found. Pockets aren't deep enough to develop a SETP.

Wow, surprised to hear that.
You'd think in today's CNC world the build quality would spot on.
Humph...

Wow, surprised to hear that.
You'd think in today's CNC world the build quality would spot on.
Humph...

A Canadian Medevac company purchased many KA 250’s a couple years ago.
The wings looked like they were hail damaged.
Beech had those wings built in Mexico.
Arnie may be a machinist, but accountant CEO CFO’s of GA companies have to pay for their extravagant lifestyles somehow.

Murray

True... I didn't make OSH last year but read bad reports of the fence and lack of ability to just wander in and look around. This year there was no fence, but a nice trailer and perhaps that was a bit off-limits. I think the staff did a good job engaging folks from the few times I was around/observing.

To Mooney's credit, though, they sent out invites to current owners for a BBQ lunch on Tuesday that was quite enjoyable! Perhaps they're catching on that those of us with old Mooneys are great ambassadors that can be leveraged for sales, even if only one or two might be able to buy new. I know I can extol the virtues of a Mooney at any airport and perhaps catch the ear of a new pilot (or student) that doesn't know why they're such a great plane and perhaps was figuring to buy a Cirrus by default...but the fact remains that Mooney is painted in to a corner in terms of product development right now. I personally think the M10 was a great concept, but very poorly executed and it probably left a very bad taste in the rookie owner's mouth about investing in GA. I don't know what they'll do next, frankly. The fact that the brand has survived this long is a strong testament to the plane, despite the tumultuous business history.

I did witness one very grumpy guy cuss Mooney booth folks for not letting him use their employee bathroom in the trailer, though. Not sure why he expected he could use their can! Did anyone get to use a Textron bathroom by chance? :P

That's a ridiculous gripe. The B hangar was right there, with real toilets.

I didn't get a "go away" vibe from Mooney this year. Their cabin interiors are as good as I've ever seen.

Profiling is a huge mistake in professional sales. I’m sure these “sales reps” have no training which is unforgivable when you’re trying to sell a $1,000,000 airplane much less anything else. It might be that one half of one percent of the folks the salesman might meet are financially capable and actually interested but it doesn’t take long for a pro to determine that after a few key questions once the prospect has been greeted. That’s the art and it takes the right personality with training to find the diamond in the rough. Do things correctly and you’ve got a shot at selling a new plane.

They weren't on my 1970 V35B. And a lot of the shop heads were pretty bad.

I didn't get a "go away" vibe either, but I wandered in at about 1:00 on Monday and closely examined every airplane in their display.
No one with a Mooney shirt on bothered to say "hi".
I walked right past a few of them.
It's really not that hard to do.
Maybe it was bad timing, and they had gotten warmed up by the time Chuck passed by.
Or I had the wrong kind of overalls on.

Regardless, it makes no sense to buy something that they don't seem determined to sell.
Even if you can't get excited about the looks of a Cirrus, your investment in a new airplane is going further with Cirrus into improving the future of GA rather than going into a company that doesn't seem interested in taking competition seriously.

From the data in the earlier link Mooney sold 7 Ovations, and 7 Acclaims in 2018.

Is GA dying?
Were experimental sales or experimental component sales on the uptick?