As an editor of Flying Magazine at the time the BD-5 was being promoted, I was fairly familiar with the program. In fact, I remember traveling to Bede's Newton, Kansas factory and meeting a young Bede engineer named Rutan--Burt Rutan. He took me flying in his own homebuilt, the VariViggen. I was half-terrified, it being the first homemade airplane I'd ever been in. (Little did I know that years later, I'd go on to myself build a Falco.)
One of Jim Bede's main flaws was that he was using deposits and payments for kit parts to fund the development of those kits. Though I have to say, Jim was a delightful man--impossible to dislike (unless you'd sent him $5,000 and never saw a thing for it).