You're being awfully generous, Tom.
I agree there is a market for small, modern steam engines, and not the universal market Cyclone pretends there is. But, even if Cyclone got the world's best marketing plan it would make no difference. The Cyclone engine just does not work. It never has and it never will.
Harry Schoell has no intention of making a working steam engine that could be marketed successfully. He's only about proving to the world that he is a genius inventor. No lie is too big to reach that goal.
Someone on Facebook again compared Harry to Edison. What the believers miss is that as soon as Edison figured out an idea (a) could not work well enough for people to want it, or, (b) would not make a profitable business for him, he dropped it and went on to other ideas. Harry's fans seem to think Edison took one idea and spent all his resources and more than a decade with zero progress and continued with it indefinitely. (The fans also don't realize that Edison made his inventions WORK first, then patented them, then sold them to investors. Just the opposite of Cyclone.)
Ohio State engineers looked at the WHE and redesigned it right away to eliminate the spider bearing. Cyclone put out a press release quoting Harry saying how much the noise and vibration were reduced, and eliminating half the cylinders reduced the parts count and manufacturing costs.
Ohio State then found the bearings could not be made to survive for any time. Chris Nelson hired some of those engineers who spent two more years trying to make the WHE survive before running out of money and shutting down development.
Meanwhile, the Mark 5 engine had been making progress only in that Harry kept stripping off his inventions, except the spider bearing and water lubrication. They stayed.
So Cyclone had burned through $25 million in investors' cash and couldn't sell any more stock. Harry and Frankie needed to get serious about making a working product. So Harry designs the 5 hp Mark 1 and 20 hp Mark 3 as the company's saviors.
Except he designs them as six cylinder radials with spider bearings and water lubrication. I.e., the ingenious Harry Schoell engine design.
Guaranteed failure.
I've always been surprised by the lack of instrumentation in photos. The test stands are like something you'd pull out of a dumpster. Old, mismatched gauges from boat instrument panels and cheap multimeters duct taped to the stand.
Of course, there's no reason to collect objective data if you have no intention of using it, is there? For instance, when water lubricated bearings constantly failed with a textbook lack of lubrication failure, Harry didn't call in support engineers from bearing companies and trust their opinions. Instead, he came up with his own theory that bearings are really tiny generators and then he spent who knows how many years trying to electrically insulate the bearings. With no success.
As you mention, basically no gas engines under 20 hp have more than one cylinder because of the economics. Harry Schoell's insistence on using six cylinders shows he isn't interested in designing marketable engines.
The fact that he straight up lied to investors about all the technical problems having been solved at the 2011 shareholder's open house also shows he has no interest in making a working steam engine.
He's only about squeezing the last penny out of investors to glorify himself.
