"We're the largest aircraft manufacturing company in Kerr County, Texas," said a beaming J. Nelson Happy, as he started his press conference at Oshkosh on Tuesday afternoon.

Happy, Mooney's CEO, invited all to his exhibit, where the progress of the Mooney brothers could be seen in a beautifully-restored Mite (owned by Mal Gross) sits next to the latest offering from the Mooney plant.

That Mite:

This little gem was introduced by Mr. Gross himself, who explained that he loved the first Mite he ever flew, on Dec. 15, 1955, a date he still remembers. "Forty years after my first flight in a Mite, almost to the day, I bought this one." He said that it was in great shape, but did a re-covering, anyway. "The fuselage had never been re-covered," he noted, "and it was in great shape." Unlike modern Mooneys, the Mite was made of wood and fabric. "We figured that, of the entire airplane, there was maybe a total of one square foot of wood that needed attention, delaminated or something," he said, thinking back on months of love-driven work. He liked the Mooney performance -- even of the little Mite: "The service ceiling of that machine, even with its little 65-horse Continental, was something like 19,000 feet."

Fast forward:

As for the "old, new" Mooneys, Mr. Happy told us that "All the aircraft we inherited when we bought the assets, all the partially-complete airplanes, have been completed and sold." That's 19 airplanes, not a bad start, considering the shape the company was in a little over a year ago. "The hard part," he said, "was picking up where they left off [in assembly]."

The newest Mooneys are, by anyone's estimation, the best-ever Mooneys. "Airplane interiors are nice," Happy said, "but they're not really even up to modern automotive standards." That's getting changed. "We think that people who buy airplanes the quality of a Mooney," he told us, "should sit in an interior at least as good as the one they drive to the airport in."

The Consortium:

Mooney is building a consortium with specialists. Among the members are BAe Systems, KosKal (in Russia), and Venture Industries. Venture is a car-interior specialty house in Detroit, and they're applying their expertise (they specialise in super interiors for the Audi A6 and Hummer H2, among others) to the Mooney interior.

Keeping with the automotive-quality theme, Mr. Happy said that, "People are used to buying a car with zero defects. We think airplanes should be the same."

Running with the ball:

Just over a year ago, when Mooney was recently-purchased and near-moribund on the shop floor, "We had 16 employees." Now, Nelson Happy told us, "we have 175, and Mooney is the building block for additional [lines]." He's working on getting production up, and getting quality to the "perfect" level, at the same time. "We will be able to increase production to 70-80 airplanes a year," as the plan comes to fruition. "We calculate the market would support that kind of volume."

FMI: www.mooney.com