Cessna Single-Engine Evolution: 30 Years Of Magic

With that, let's take a look at how a great company redefined the world of personal air transportation.

Sometimes the original ancestor airplane gives few clues that it could someday inspire the kind of state-of-the-art product we know that it ultimately will. And so it is with the Cessna Airmaster, a mid-'30s advancement that, as the company surely knew, wasn't advanced enough. It was and remains a beautiful aircraft, and it was competitive with a couple of other cabin monoplanes of the day from Stinson and others, though it had little to distinguish it from them. Perhaps its most noteworthy design feature is its cantilever wing. But in terms of materials, the Airmaster, with its fabric-covered, welded steel fuselage, wood wings and radial engine/taildragger design, was decidedly old school. But you probably know just where this is going. First flight: Aug. 19, 1934. Number built: 183. Status: Out of production.

A year after the 195 made its first flight, Cessna introduced the most revolutionary small plane in its history, at least in terms of design influence---the Cessna 140. A two-seat side-by-side trainer/runabout, it would become not only a popular model in its own right but also the jumping-off point for two decades of new models. What was revolutionary about it? How was it different from the 195? The answers are, in scale. The 140 series had a five-year production run, with nearly 8,000 produced. By the end of its production, the 140A had metal wings, rear windows and updated wing struts. It's counterintuitive, but the wing struts were an advancement over the cantilever (no-strut) wing of the 195. The 140's was lighter, very strong and much easier to produce. There was very little downside and lots of upside. The other advancement was the diminutive scale of it. It was easy to fly, used very little fuel, and managed decent speed for not much in the way of horsepower. First flight: June 28, 1945. Number built: 7,644. Status: Out of production.

After the war, Cessna designers correctly believed that a new, more modern consumer would demand new, more modern aircraft, and they did. To fulfill this need, Cessna created a new breed of airplane that still had one gear leg firmly stuck in the pre-war era. The 195 was a departure from the Airmaster in many ways. It featured all-metal design and a more powerful engine and kept the already-modern cantilever wing design. But the designers held on to as many features as they let go of. The 195 retained two main features from the Airmaster, those being the taildragger gear configuration and the radial engine. In essence, the designers at Cessna failed to be modern enough. Contrast the 195 with another light single produced across town in Wichita, the Beechcraft Bonanza, which was the first truly modern light plane. Unlike the 195, it featured a lower-horsepower opposed engine, sleek aerodynamics, a low wing and the same all-metal construction as the 195. Not that the 195 isn't a great airplane. It is. But it was an evolutionary death in many ways, and to its credit, Cessna knew that. First flight: 1945. Number built: 1,180. Status: Out of production.

If the 172 (wait for it) was the epitome of modernizing a good product to make it a blockbuster, the upgrade of the 170 into the 180 is the ruggedizing of an existing product for a segment of the market that flies harder and hauls more. The 180 first flew in 1952 and was produced from 1953 all the way up until 1980, this despite the fact that its higher-powered stablemate, the 185, was all that and a lot more. In a way, the success of the 180 was one of two taildraggers that Cessna continued to produce in parallel with their tricycle-gear counterparts, the 182 and the 206, respectively, though the 206 was an outgrowth of the 205. The 180 and the 185 continue to be highly valued and heavily utilized aircraft in the bush. First flight: May 26, 1952. Number built: 6,193. Status: Out of production.

Today, the 170 is almost a niche plane, but this 140 for four was perfectly sized for the mass market Cessna was looking to command. A little more powerful, faster and by definition roomier, the all-metal opposed engine-powered 170 was a quiet revolution, one that would take Piper more than a decade to counter, when it finally ditched the Tri-Pacer approach to small plane design and came out with the Cherokee. It would take Beech even longer to come out with its competitor, the Musketeer, and by then Cessna has already come out with the next big thing. First flight: June 1, 1948. Number built: 5,174. Status: Out of production.

As far as the 185 is concerned, all that's true for the 180 is true and then some for the light and rugged 185, which was one of Cessna's longest-produced aircraft, getting its start in 1961 and continuing to be built until 1985. The 185 is powered by Continental six-cylinder engines, the 470 early on and, later, 520-series engines of up to 300-hp, giving it a payload of around 1,400 pounds. Because of their capacity and power, 185s are popular floatplanes. First flight: July 1960. Number built: More than 4,400. Status: Out of production.

That next big thing was the 172, which Cessna brought to market in 1956. The 172 wasn't as big a deal as the 170 in terms of concept---it really was a 170 with a nose gear, at least at first---but the impact of that nose gear, which made landing a plane not only easier but also a lot more reliable, changed the market. And the 172 took over the market, becoming in essence the four-door sedan of the air. Over time, the plane evolved a great deal, even if it looks largely the same from 1961 on, and Cessna over the years continued to sell a lot of them, around 50,000 overall. It is, as you surely know, the most-produced aircraft in history. Today, new Skyhawks are sold almost exclusively as trainers, and they fetch a breathtaking price, too, though older ones are still changing hands for a lot less and are still being flown for all the great reasons they originally were. First flight: June 12, 1955. Number built: More than 44,000. Status: In production.

It's hard to believe that the nosewheel version of the Cessna 140 could become anything other than a forgettable staple of aviation's past, but despite its small size and cozy seating, the 150 is not only one of the most-produced planes in history, it's also one of the most important. While today the 172 is the most widely used trainer in the world, for decades that distinction went to the 150 and its successor, the 152, which were economical to buy, fly and fix. This magic formula, which has been nearly impossible to replicate in recent decades, allowed many tens of thousands of people to learn to fly, many of whom would be hard pressed to make it happen today. Cessna declined to reintroduce the 152 when it began building piston singles again in the early '90s, though after the Skycatcher debacle, it probably wished that it had. First flight: 1977. Number built: 7,584. Status: Out of production.

The 182 is a beefier version of the 172, true, but by adding power and strength, Cessna took a product pretty good at most everything and created a step-up plane that was remarkably satisfying in just about every way. It is fast enough, it hauls a good load, it's roomy, and it's rugged enough for dirt and gravel. For many pilots, the 182 is an arrival, and its charms were no secret. Cessna has built more than 23,237 Skylanes. It is, indeed, one of the three models Cessna reintroduced when it restarted piston production in the mid-'90s. Cessna also used the 182 as the jumping-off point for the development, through a short intermediate step or two, into the 206 and the 210. First flight: 1956. Number built: More than 23,237. Status: In production.

During the late '50s and early '60s, Cessna was dominant in the market for light and medium performance singles with its 172, 182 and 150 models, but it was also dipping its toe in the high-performance market, which it had previously straddled with its fixed-gear big-engine taildragger, the 195, which it called the Businessliner. Its initial foray into the market was underwhelming. The first iteration of the 210 was little more than a 182 with retractable gear and a bigger engine, a 260-hp six-cylinder Continental. It was certainly no match for the Beech Bonanza nor the Piper Comanche, two high-performance retractable-gear models. But Cessna kept on tinkering with the formula. By 1967, the 210 was the way we think of it today, with a good-sized cabin, slicker aerodynamics, retractable gear, a big motor and, of course, that beautiful cantilever wing. By this point, the Centurion was a unicorn, the only high-wing, high-performance six-seater on the market, and it attracted a huge following, eventually even getting a pressurized version, the P-210, of which Cessna built 874 of them, almost one-tenth of the nearly 10,000 Centurions that Cessna churned out. The 210 was another casualty of the downturn of the early '80s, and, like the 150, it would not live to see another day even after Cessna resumed production on other models 10 years after. First flight: January 1957. Number built: 9,304. Status: Out of production.

One of at least four planes that evolved from the 182, the 206 has, like the 185, become a stalwart of backcountry flying. With its big rear-loading doors, large useful load and respectable cross-country performance, the 206 can serve as a capacious personal transportation airplane with a backcountry attitude or backcountry air taxi with an attitude. Along with the 172 and 182, the 206 was one of three planes that were reintroduced when Cessna restarted piston production after its 10-year-long hiatus. First flight: 1962. Number built: More than 8,506. Status: In production.

If the Centurion represented the pinnacle of single-engine achievement for Cessna, the Cardinal represents the company coming up against the future and a marketplace of customers that was changing slower than its designs were. As you might know, Cessna envisioned the Cardinal, a four-seat, high-cantilever-winged, stabilator-equipped, fixed-gear (the retractable version came later) personal airplane, as a replacement for the 172 Skyhawk. In contrast to the launch of the 172, the coming-out party for the Cardinal was a disaster. It was close to a dealer revolt. The Cardinal had teething problems, true, but the biggest one, which necessitated the redesign of the horizontal tail, was quickly accomplished. The plane itself was a delight. Fun to fly, easy to get into and back out of, and it is one of the prettiest airplanes that Cessna or anyone else, for that matter, has ever made. But for all the Skyhawk lacked in sex appeal, it somehow more than made up for it in its homey and wildly utilitarian way. The Cardinal did all right, with Cessna building more than 4,000 of them over a 10-year span ending in 1977, but the Skyhawk never skipped a beat, maintaining its popularity through the introduction of the Cardinal and beyond, to the present day, in fact. First flight: July 15, 1966. Number built: 4,295. Status: Out of production.

This Incredible Plane: Cessna 140

This Incredible Plane: Cessna 152 Aerobat