Mooney 301

The Mooney 301 was a prototype aircraft built by the American manufacturer Mooney Aircraft Company in 1983, a low-wing, single-engine, six-place monoplane with retractable landing gear and a pressurized fuselage. The design team was led by Roy LoPresti and chose a new design rather than a rework of the M20, in an attempt to answer the pressurized single-engine aircraft being introduced by Beechcraft, Cessna and Piper. The number came from its projected top speed of 301 miles per hour, or 262 knots. The prototype first flew on 21 April 1983 and logged about 70 hours of flight testing that year, but only one was built. After Republic Steel was acquired by Ling-Temco-Vought and Mooney was sold, the new French-led owners judged it too heavy and too slow, and a joint venture with the SOCATA division of Aerospatiale led to the turboprop TBM 700 instead.