Fouga made sailplanes, and it showed. The Magister’s long, efficient wing and its trademark V-tail were lifted almost directly from the company’s CM.8 glider experiments. The original CM.130 concept was judged underpowered, so Fouga enlarged it into the CM.170 and fitted a pair of the new Turbomeca Marboré turbojets — each barely the size of a beer keg, each giving only around 400 kg of thrust.

The result was a machine marketed as offering “twin-engine safety with single-engine handling.” It was docile, economical and forgiving — ideal for turning ab-initio pilots into jet aviators — yet genuinely aerobatic. That combination made it one of the defining trainers of the jet age and a template that later aircraft such as the Cessna T-37 and Aero L-29 would follow.

A V-tail (or “butterfly” tail) merges the vertical and horizontal stabilisers into two diagonal surfaces, each acting as both rudder and elevator through mixed “ruddervator” controls. In theory it means less wetted area and less drag. In practice it can produce an unwanted coupling — apply rudder and the aircraft also tends to roll. Fouga answered this with a small keel-strake beneath the tail that damped the effect, so the Magister stayed honest and predictable even in the hands of a first-solo student. It is one of the few V-tailed aircraft ever built in large numbers.

The Turbomeca Marboré was a triumph of doing a lot with a little. A simple single-stage centrifugal turbojet, it was small enough to sit two abreast in the Magister’s slim fuselage, and it was cheap to build and maintain. The same basic engine powered the Cessna T-37’s French cousins, target drones and other light jets. In the Magister the twin-Marboré installation gave modest performance — a top speed around 715 km/h — but outstanding safety and economy, exactly what a trainer needs. Finnish crews nicknamed the aircraft “Kukkopilli” (ocarina) for the whistle of its engines.

The Magister was a state-and-export product of the 1950s–60s, sold air-force to air-force, so there is no clean open-market unit price on record. What does exist is a lively modern warbird market: airworthy Magisters change hands for very roughly €100,000–300,000 depending on condition and hours, which makes it one of the more affordable ex-military jets to own. Operating costs are modest by jet-warbird standards — the twin Marborés are frugal — but any figure you see should be read as an order-of-magnitude estimate, not a quoted price.