I wonder which planes from that era are "nice to fly" by modern standards. As a point of reference, the Cessna 172 trainer originates from the C170 which was designed right after World War 2. It's an extremely forgiving and well designed plane.

People like to say that the tech industry is young but most don't realize that general aviation is only a few steps removed from the early days of Wright Brothers and their contemporaries like Dumont and Blériot. It's mostly civil aviation and military-adjacent aircrafts like the X experimentals that are truly pushing the boundaries.

It's a pity that clean sheet designs of airplanes made from composites (most famously your Diamonds and Cirruses) are dreadfully expensive to maintain relative to the old school aluminium frame designs. The composite (carbon fiber polymers) airframes have way better aerodynamic characteristics and benefit a lot more from the past 50 years of aerodynamic advances. Though given the fact that modern EVs have very aerodynamic external aluminium shells, I wonder if some of the limitations of shaping aluminium into complex aerodynamic shapes have been resolved (composites are much simpler to shape, they are basically fabric version of 3D printing).