I just don't think the market is there for hundreds a year
No-one is saying there is. I don't think any light turbine aircraft has ever consistantly sold hundreds a year. There is a rather big difference between hundreds a year and the dismal negativity in the start of this thread. I was reacting to the "why would anyone buy one when they could get a used XYZ instead". When did selling hundreds a year become the discussion? Is the Cirrus jet a bad decision and a bad airplane because it won't miraculously become the best selling GA turbine airplane of all time?
They know what they can get for how much and they know the performance tradeoffs. If there was a magical hidden market there, what the hell are all those people flying?
Lucky the Cirrus guys didn't consult PPRUNE when they launched the SRxx 10 years ago. They's have been told there was already a solution for every need the SRxx met within the existing new and used plane market. Forgive me, but I suspect you'd have mentioned the TB20 in this respect. Nevertheless the SRxx sold 5000 airframes in the next 10 years whilst the legacy competitors sold a tiny trickle and stopped manufacturing (Socata TBs, Mooney). I believe there is a market for the "Cirrus Proposition", self-evidently in the $700k piston world and I suspect there will be in $2m turbine world. It's not evident in PPRUNE or FLYER forums because we tend to represent an oddball mix of plane preferences. Cirrus buyers I imagine don't post here much because of the generally hostile reaction to Cirrus aircraft and owners and marketing and whatever. Nevertheless, Cirrus sold more airplanes in the 2000s than, I suspect, the world total of piston products from Piper, Beech, Socata, Cessna, Mooney etc etc in the previous decade.
As I said, as much as I respect the company and the aircraft, a new SR22 is about the last way I'd spend $700k on aircraft. But that reflects my relatively oddball preferences compared to the mainstream new airplane market. I think forum opinion has a way of thinking it is the latter when it is the former.
ps. can anyone actually point to a mythical victim-of-cirrus-marketing ferrari driving hedge fund bloke who bought a Cirrus? Every owner I have met is a sensible, successful, knowledgeable pilot in their 40s-60s, usually active or retired professional or entrepreneur. I rather respect someone capable of buying a new $700k airplane, and have never come across the fool-deluded-by-marketing-flies-with-his-hand-on-the-CAPS-handle type a certain sort of poster here seems to assume is representative.