Quote attributed to Santayana and Winston Churchill is appropriate here—“Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
There is a REASON why geared/opposed engines are no longer offered—THEY DO NOT WORK! If they DID work—we wouldn’t have turbines—the specific fuel consumption is better for piston engines—but they are not reliable.
You don’t see piston engine airliners—airlines (and passenger) gladly pay more for reliable engines.
For business aircraft—the geared supercharged engines on Queen Airs were so unreliable that they were reolaced with turbines—begetting the KING AIR—perhaps the most reliable prop-driven GA airplane—the lowest cost to insure—and the biggest seller. (the Queen Air did enjoy a successful afterlife—when Ed Swearingen hung 400 hp direct drive Lycoming in it—getting rid of the problematic 340 and 385 hp geared Lycomings)
Piper learned the lesson on the p Navajo—Eliminating the geared Lycomings, and begetting the Cheyenne.
Commander famously had a number of models stillborn—remember the 720 Alticruiser? They became the 680 and 690.
There is a REASON why Cessna no longer makes 421s—the engines just didn’t hold up. The Conquest 1 (Cessna 425) with PT 6s replaced it—as well as the Conquest II with Garrett’s.
Single engines—Helio tried geared engines—and replaced them with direct-drive engines.
Piper was going to revolutionize business air travel with the infamous Malibu despite a valiant effort to make them work—none of Pipers big pressurized piston engine singles stood up to operation at high weights—or problems of operating a marginally-powere single in the flight levels (IF you could REACH the flight levels!)
Cessna—the leading producer of “working” utility singles in the world—didn’t even attempt a piston engine on their Caravan utility airplane—they went straight to a turbine—and cornered the market.
There is a REASON that big horizontally opposed piston engines don’t work (let’s not stop it at horizontally opposed engines—even large RADIAL engines have a reliability problem )the reason that the military, the airlines, and the corporate world abandoned them!)
Yet this “new” model—with a cost of over a million dollars—floats a proposal for a STOL aircraft (even HARDER on engines!) powered with an unreliable engine???
There is a REASON why “working airplanes” (like commuters, and Ag planes)—are powered with turbines—despite their poorer fuel specifics—it’s because they WORK—and they are DEPENDABLE. Tecnam will apparently have to learn the lesson for themselves. Perhaps somebody should provide them with Churchill’s quote.