Buyer Walked Into The Display Tent With A Check

“Things have moved very fast for us over the past eight months,” said Samson Motors CEO, Sam Bousfield, at EAA Air Venture 2009. “We had planned an announcement this week at Air Venture, to let people know that we had reached the point in development of the Switchblade MMV (Multi Mode Vehicle) where we were comfortable accepting delivery slot deposits, but things took an unexpected jump forward for us on Monday at AirVenture 2009 when a man with check in hand, (unnamed at this point) walked into our tent, caught us completely off guard and said. ‘I want to be the first person to place a deposit’! With that, we were officially in business selling airplanes!”

Switchblade Artist's Rendering

Since the first deposit was placed on Monday, Bousfield states, “the reaction to our deposit status announcement has been far better than we’d expected. We’ve relieved several contracts, both from our online newsletter participants, who were allowed an advance notice to the opening of deposits, and from visitors to our tent at AirVenture.”

Samson Motors announced the newly redesigned three-wheeled flying motorcycle earlier this year, as well as their new alliance with DAR Corporation as the principal engineering firm for their innovative three wheeled motorcycle. “Since we made the announcement [DAR] at Sun-n-Fun this spring,” said Bousfield, “our partners at DAR have calculated a fairly refined timeline for getting us to flight testing status with the prototype they will construct, and further, they have projected an estimated time to first kit delivery of one year after initial flight testing.”

Samson and DAR have decided based on current progress that first flight of the prototype will most likely occur late in July of 2010 and after a successful fight test program, first kit deliveries will begin approximately one year later, in the third quarter 2011.

Switchblade Artist's Rendering

Prior to “cutting metal” on the prototype, Samson and DAR have moved forward with an engineering cutaway mockup, used to test component location and functionality, as well as cockpit ergonomics, that mockup was unveiled Monday at the EAA Air Venture in Oshkosh, WI.

FMI: http://samsonmotorworks.com/