Cessna 195 Businessliner

There are few personal airplanes that can deliver both mission utility and attention-getting nostalgia. The venerable Cessna 195 Businessliner is one of them. Cessna named it the Businessliner because it was, well, a business aircraft.But it was not the first business aircraft by a long shot. It is probably the most practical of classics because it is a good traveling airplane that will not cripple you to keep it maintained. It is all-metal and has good parts availability, unlike such machines as the Beech Staggerwing, Spartan Executive and Stinson Reliant. It is the link between the poorly harmonized, high adverse yaw radial-engine classics of the 1930s with the feet-on-the floor machines of today, carrying on only the adverse yaw.Many vintage aircraft are indeed works of art, but the 195 is actually a practical classic. One owner refers to his 195 as a Cessna 206 that gets preferred parking at the fly-in breakfasts.A direct descendant of the 1934 C-34 Airmaster, the C-190 series represents a lot of Cessna heritage-it was the first all-metal Cessna, and the last Cessna to be built with a radial engine.When you arrive on the ramp in a 195, heads turn. Best of all, 195s are relatively affordable to buy and support. For the pilot who is on the ball, they can be relatively easy to fly.