Ugliest Light Planes

While some of the planes on this list were challenged looks-wise as their designers struggled to make their special purpose configuration less than ungainly, others were clear attempts at doing something the company had never done before. In the case of the BE-23 Musketeer, Beech was hardly new to the all-metal airplane game, but its […]

Another snub-nosed twin, the Piper Apache isn’t going to win any beauty contests, but if you can believe it, Piper actually improved its looks after adopting it from Stinson. That original airplane had a twin-tail to go along with its short nose cone, and the combination wasn’t flattering. The Apache is proof that there can […]

The Piper Tri-Pacer is the answer to the question, asked by Piper back in the day, “How can we build a nosewheel four-seater without designing a whole new plane?” Easy. Put a nose wheel on a Pacer. The result is an aircraft that files okay, carries four svelte friends, and doesn’t cost a lot. But […]

You’ve noticed that a lot of these planes were purpose-built, and this one is no exception. Except you probably know what that purpose was. The 337 SkyMaster was Cessna’s answer to the question, “How do you make a light twin that isn’t prone to loss of control following an engine failure on takeoff?” The answer […]

The T-50, as fans of the show might remember, was the first airplane owned by the hero of the popular television show Sky King. It was also Cessna’s first twin, and looking at it and the materials it was constructed from, it’s clear that the T-50 was transitional technology, helping pave the way for Cessna, […]

The Erco Ercoupe was an early 1930s attempt to create a plane that was safer to fly than most of the things that were falling out of the sky right and left that came before it. And while it is exceptionally awkward looking, there are good reasons for why it is. The plane, one of […]

The PZL Wilga, our sole Eastern European listee, was designed to be a sport plane, a trainer, a parachute plane, a STOL utility workhorse, and a glider tug. So this one’s a case not of weird design because its creators were trying to make a plane that did one difficult thing but, rather, because they […]