Entrepreneur Geoff Mountain's perseverance has paid off. The ceo of an electronics manufacturing company made the winning bid of U.S.$1.782m at a second auction for immediate delivery of an Eclipse 500.

Mountain just missed out in the first auction powered by eBay to a winning bid of U.S. $1,833,945 made by another entrepreneur, Morten Wagner of Denmark (see EBAN September). Mountain has an Eclipse 500 on order, but it's not slated for delivery until 2009, so he decided to bid again in the second auction. And Eclipse says Mountain is keeping his 2009 Eclipse 500 position as well. An order book of 2,700 means the Eclipse 500 is not available to new buyers until the third quarter of 2009.

Mountain, who is from West Yorkshire, will be using the Eclipse 500 he won in the second auction for personal use after training that will enable him to pilot it himself.

Further opportunities for corporate or charter owners to buy an Eclipse 500 at auction, and enjoy beating the backlog queue, are likely to be very limited.

Eclipse, which has agreed further financing, says the auctions fulfilled a promise it made seven years ago. Mike McConnell, vp sales and marketing, adds: "The auctions were hugely successful but we are not prepared at present to commit to another in 2008."