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What I would like to achieve is along the lines of: type TAncestor = class FData: TArray<???>; // ... // A lot of methods that load, export, change FData // in a way common to all the descendants (mostly Length // and SetLength are used) // // Differences in managing FData are extracted into // protected virtual methods // ... end; TAncestorClass = class of TAncestor; TDescendant1 = class(TAncestor) type TItem = ... // Some type // ... // Virtual methods that do descendant-specific things // are overriden here // ... end; TDescendant2 = class(TAncestor) type TItem = ... // Another type // ... // Virtual methods that do descendant-specific things // are overriden here // ... end; ... The TItem-specific code is all in descendants, TAncestor just implements general management of how and when to resize FData and provides boilerplate code for loading, exporting and performing container-level changes on the data thatwould otherwise be duplicated in every descendant. This could probably be achieved with generics (descending from TAncestor<T> with particular T for each descendant), but this approach fails to support metaclasses and nested types. Am I missing something or is this not possible?