June 2010 — BACK IN 1998 FLYING sent ace photographer Paul Bowen to Chicago to photograph a revolutionary new airplane, the Cirrus SR20. Editor-in-chief Mac McClellan flew the airplane and weighed in on such eye-opening new features as the BRS whole-airplane recovery parachute system, the down-and-welded landing gear (unusual at the time for such a fast single) and the signature Cirrus side-yoke. It’s a little hard, 12 years after the fact, to remember the kind of controversy these features — the chute, in particular — generated, but they did. And it might be a little hard for those of us who have flown the two Cirrus airplanes to remember just how unrefined those first-generation airplanes were, but this, too, is true. The fact is that we were all just getting to know the airplane, the company and, indeed, the whole concept of the fast, composite, fixed-gear four-seater. The SR20 was that true pioneer.
That said, with Cirrus’ introduction shortly after of the substantially more powerful and better performing SR22, the SR20 suddenly seemed like a footnote. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with the SR20; on the contrary, it was pretty much everything the company said it would be. But the lure of the 180-knot SR22 made the 150-knot-on-a-good-day SR20 look a lot less tempting. And that’s not a casual observation. The SR22 outsold the 20 by a margin that some years approached 10 to 1.
