Interesting goings on

So Rans has recently announced some improvements to their S-7LS Courier, and even more recently announced that their S-6 and S-19 is going to be discontinued in the Ready to Fly category.
I can't blame them, and I think it'll do well for the industry. Here's why: too much competition.
Piper could make an affordable airplane in the 1940s because they built thousands of them. At one point, one J-3 was rolling off the assembly line every 20 minutes. They build 19,073 of them. Nineteen *thousand* seventy three. The LSA manufacturer's have trouble selling a couple hundred, these folks sold almost twenty thousand.
But think about it, what competed with the J-3 at the time? The Aronca Champ/L-3, the various offerings from Taylorcraft, to a point some Luscombes, and that's about it. There weren't zillions of 60 year old aircraft, nor were there 19 other manufacturers building an airplane damn near identical to yours.
That's what's going on today. Gee, how do you decide which do buy? Rans S-6 Coyote, Kitfox, Eurofox, Just Aircraft Highlander, X-Air, Cheetah...All of these are Rotax 912 powered, tube-and-rag, side-by-side LSAs, most available with folding wings and with the capability to be easily converted from taildragger to trike and back again. The market didn't need the SLSA Coyote. It's a great aircraft, but the world just doesn't need teh SLSA version. I'm glad the kit is still produced.
Same with the S-19 Venterra. It blends right in with the Sting Sport, Sport Star, SportCruiser, Tecnam Sierra, and others like them (low wing, rotax powered, all metal (the sting is composite), side by side tricycle.) The S-19 didn't have much to set it apart. In fact, I would rather have another plane in that list than the Rans.
The S-7LS Courier though. Ooh buddy. I spent some time drooling over the SportCruiser/PiperSport, and I'm gonna drool here too.
The SportCruiser is the modern, sleek thing you see yourself looking sexy on a California cold winter ramp in your leather jacket and khakis, loading your leather flight bag in the back and taxiing out onto that long black asphalt runway. The Courier is more at home on a grass field in the late summer, with a pilot in shorts and sandals leaning on a faded "learn to fly here" sign. If the SportCruiser looks like the hot college daughter of a DA-20 and an XL-2, the Courier is her hot roommate, the daughter of a Cub and a Citabria.
The Courier is on a niche of it's own. It's not one of the Kitfox clones I listed above because it's seated in tandem rather than dual. It isn't a boldfaced ripoff of the Piper Cub like the products Cubcrafters and American Champion. It's more like a modern homage to the classics as a whole. There's some cub in there, there's some champ in there, and there's a few things that are all her own. You can own one for less than $100,000 too.
This is the kind of thing that needs to happen for Light Sport to survive. Duplicates need to go. Can you tell me why the market needs both the CTMC and the Tecnam Eaglet? Some manufacturer's need to stick to EAB kits. Vans has an interesting idea: They certified one SLSA, haven't sold it, and are selling RV-12 ELSA kits by the gross, while still selling their other experimental kits. Sonex is doing well without producing ready-made aircraft.
I think the industry could do very well if there were a lot of manufacturers of very quick build kits (think 50 hours or less, mostly assembly and rigging), and a few very good SLSAs. I think Rans is doing about what it should.