How sad to put this purchase of 17 airplanes into juxtaposition with the last half of the 70’s when Cessna was pumping SO many airplanes out that they were leasing parking spaces on all the surrounding airports. At that time, this purchase wouldn’t have been a drop in the bucket.
Everybody pines for the years of 1977 and 1978. It might be good to recall that just because Cessna was building airplanes at an unbelievable rate, doesn’t mean they were selling them at that rate. Cessna had their distributors over a barrel where they had to take aircraft, by contract, even if there weren’t enough buyers for them. So the factory was free to keep going like gangbusters, even without real customers for their product. That overbuild is one of the reasons that general aviation collapsed in the early 1980s, and the marketplace got along (mostly fine) with no new aircraft produced for ten years between 1986 and 1996.
The price of a new one!!! 