Accordingly, talks soon commenced between Mooney and SOCATA on the subject of producing a turboprop-powered derivative of the 301. The product that emerged from these discussions was a new design, referred to as the TBM 700, which was considerably heavier than the original 301 while provisioned with more than twice the available power. The prefix of the designation, TBM, originated from the initials "TB", which stands for Tarbes, the French city in which SOCATA is located, while the "M" stands for Mooney. At the time of its conception, while several aviation companies had studied or were otherwise considering the development of such an aircraft, the envisioned TBM 700 was the first high-performance single-engine passenger/cargo aircraft to enter production. From the onset, key performance criteria were established for the design, demanding a high level of reliability while also being capable of an unequalled speed/altitude combination amongst the TBM 700 other single-engined peers.
