There is a very good reason the second hand market is incredibly depressed and why it will stay so and actually get worse.
I am not sure I completely agree with that actually.
What about the basic utility of a piston twin or single has changed over the last 30 years?
I would suggest nothing.
In inflation corrected $ are they
that much more expenive to run (DOCs) than they were 30 years ago?
Maybe a little but I would argue there isn't much in it. In fact given the vaste strides in avionics and engine technologies etc they might even be a little cheaper in some respects...we used to happily burn vast amounts of avgas in the good old days and now we have the technology that enables quite substantial savings in fuel used...yeah fuel is currently peaked in price but it has done that before and then settled back to more normal prices.
Remember I am talking inflation corrected $.
Insurance wise certainly piston twins have suffered...but that seems to me to be an over reaction to the opposite case that existed in the 70s and maybe even into the early 80s when insuring a twin was cheaper than a single...an equally silly scenario. A well flown Baron is as safe as a well flown single...a much safer than a badly flown Bonanza. Overall accident statistics over a VERY LONG TIME support that position. The vast majority of accidents, twin or single, are not engine failure related but brain failure related...flying into a hill in bad weather is equally stupid no matter how many engines are bolted on. Insurance premiums need to be more directly correlated with experience and recurrent training rather than "Baron premium = Bonanza premium x 2".
Age?
What does a brand new Bonanza or Baron do that a
well maintained 10, 20 or 30 year old one cannot do?
Apart from cost 3-5 times as much to buy?
Every bit of technology in a brand new aircraft is transportable into a 1975, 1980 or 1985 Baron, C310, Bonanza or 210...except that fast glass G1000 ****...certainly in terms of total system integration anyway.
I personally don't find the G1000 cockpit technology attractive at any price let alone the 6 figure addition to a non glass cockpit equivalent. I do accept that I am standing out here almost alone on that position but there you go...I think the technology has a negative safety implication that has thus far been swamped in "OH WOW".
A fella in the US recently CFIT'd himself + 1 to death in a brand new Cirrus in
exactly the same time honoured way people have been doing it since the 1920s so no amount of technology can overcome 'dumb as a box of rocks'
So a fella like Nivo can take, for arguments sake, a 1975-80 B58 Baron with say 5000hr TT and runnout engines but in otherwise very neat condition airframe wise (they do exist) for say AUD80-100k and put new paint, engines, leather interior, Garmin avionics, fuel cells and rewire it for say an additional 200-250k and end up with a Baron that is exactly how different from a 2007 model at AUD1.5 million?
That's a capital cost differential of nearly 1.2 million $
You could go completely spastic and lash out on a new digital autopilot a some of the new glass cockpit stuff, if it floats your boat, and still be a cool million in front.
People will say "but the day after you finish all that restoration it won't be worth what you have spent".
True...go buy a brand new Baron and then see what it is worth a week later....or Cirrus or TBM 850 or Holden Commodore.
The same story holds true for a new Bonanza vs an older one.
Plenty of people seem to have the $ to drop on new Cirrus aircraft..AUD$600k?
A well maintained Car 3 certified aircraft has a VERY long life expectancy...yep annual maintenance on a 30 year old Baron is more than a new one...probably equivalent to about 1/10th the
interest payable (assuming say 6%) on the
capital cost differential.
I would suggest if you took a 30 year old aircraft and restored it as per above the annual maintenance going forward would be feckall different to a new one.
There are many 1000s of 'old' aircraft flying in Australia...if they all dissappeared tomorrow the maintenance organisations couldn't survive on the small numbers of new aircraft (less than 5 years old say) that remained. The industry would be gutted and VERY few people could afford to fly anymore.
As you may have picked up in my above treatise I have had about a gutfull of hearing about 'uneconomical
old piston aircraft'...single or twin.
If you have the money to own one just for fun or work that requires you to travel all over a large area (and is sufficiently well remunerated) something like a C210, 310 or Baron is every bit as
cost effective in 2007 as they were in 1977.