With its high T-tail, the Duchess epitomized the 1970s’ sense of sleek styling. But sleek looks or not, too few buyers materialized to keep the airplane alive.

In the history of general aviation manufacturing, some airplanes were instant hits and destined to endure. The Beechcraft Bonanza is a classic example. Others seemed like good ideas at the time, but either the market timing was wrong or the models just didn’t have the sales appeal the factory had hoped for. The Mooney PFM qualifies for that label and so does another airplane, Beechcraft’s entry-level Duchess twin.

The Duchess sprang from the idea that if you got a customer in the door to buy an entry-level product, the same customer would graduate up the line and eventually buy more sophisticated and higher profit margin airplanes. The legacy of this market-think was…