Unfortunately as the demand for less expensive engines increases the quality and performance decreases accordingly. Many are satisfied with the reduced performance, quality, and reliability of the less expensive engines. Why? Because many are enamored with the lower price while most have not been in the gasser game long enough to understand the differences to recognize the greater value of the better products. This has an effect on the higher quality manufacturers because they lose sales to the budget manufacturers. As the experience level of the budget buyers increase they start seeking higher performance levels but, sadly, their earlier buying habits reduced the availability of high quality engines. They also become upset when they discover that to obtain better products they must pay substantially more for them so they loudly and publically complain about the prices differences between budget and high quality products, hoping to force the quality manufacturers to lower their prices. It doesn't work the way they hope. Higher quality always comes at higher expense.

The above also has an impact on those that might be contemplating buying into an engine manufacturer or starting their own company. In my case I have considered buying two separate engine manufacturers but a combination of our economic condition and the flood of prospective engine customers to lower priced and lower quality products makes the decision very difficult. It's hard to justify taking over a company requiring a substantial financial investment when you know sales levels will be too low to turn a profit. The only other option avaialble if you wanted to start or take over a company would be to move your manufacturing operation offshore and subject yourself and your product to the whims of whomever is performing the manufacturing process. Quality levels decrease because the offshore jobbers substitute materials to increase their profit margins and closely held tolerances go out the window. Both of which increase returns and decrease customer satisfaction with the product while decreasing profit margins and increasing the workload of the prime vendor due to increased customer returns.

With the above for reference, why would anyone invest the time, money, and effort required to start up or buy out a higher end manufacturing process? Unless one was comfortable with investing tens of thousands of dollars in a venture that would likely never recover the initial investment, let alone turn a profit, it probably won't happen. At least not on the hobby engine level. We've done this to ourselves and there's nobody else to blame for the situation.