The world’s most successful manufacturer of kit planes is tentatively entering the OEM market with an initial run of 12 deluxe copies of its RV-12 LSA. In a podcast interview with AVweb at AOPA Summit in Palm Springs, Van’s Aircraft founder and president Dick VanGrunsven said it was a market the company was thinking about when it launched the RV-12. The first run will not be built at the company’s Aurora factory. They will be built by kit completion specialists Synergy Air. Orders will be taken in November and first deliveries are expected in the new year, VanGrunsven said.
The kit price is about $65,000 including engine. The base price of the fly-away model will be $105,000 but the first 12 “Signature Edition” aircraft will be $115,000. Van’s has sold more than 700 RV-12 kits, and more than 200 are flying, and the company says that’s an important statistic. “Production SLSA RV-12s will include the benefits of this real-world flight experience, rather than just factory testing done by professional pilots,” the company said in a news release.
