This 1965 Piper PA-24-260 Comanche Is a Sleek, Handsome ‘AircraftForSale’ Top Pick

Today’s Top Pick is a 1965 Piper PA-24-260 Comanche.

Piper introduced its PA-24 in 1957, in part as a reply to the Beechcraft Bonanza, the sleek, fast, and futuristic all-metal, four-seat retractable that had entered the market 10 years earlier. The new Piper was very much in line with the Bonanza, but a big departure for the company, which was still turning out Cub-derived, high-wing, rag-and-tube machines at the time. Streamlined, modern, and attractive, the PA-24 took its place as Piper’s flagship model.

If there was a downside to the PA-24, for Piper, at least, it was manufacturing cost. This was, after all, a complex airplane with a lot of parts. Its beautiful, tapered wing, for example, cost more to produce than the constant-chord “Hershey bar” wing of the newer, simpler PA-28 series. The latter had gained popularity by the time the airplane for sale here rolled off the assembly line.

Piper steadily improved the PA-24 with more horsepower, more windows, and a redesigned interior. But when the adjacent Susquehanna River flooded the company’s Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, factory in 1972 and damaged the tooling for PA-24s, Piper ended the model’s production and focused on its more profitable PA-28s.

This 1965 PA-24-260 has 5,210 hours on the airframe, zero hours since overhaul on its Lycoming IO-540-D4A5 engine, and 370 hours on the Hartzell propeller since overhaul. The panel includes a Garmin GTN 650 GPS/Nav/Com/MFD, TKM MX300 Nav/Com, GTX 345 transponder, GMA 350 audio panel, and JPI EDM700 engine monitor.

Pilots looking for a sharp, fast, four-seat traveling airplane with modern looks and vintage appeal should consider this 1965 Piper PA-24-260, which is available for $129,900 on AircraftForSale.

You can arrange financing of the aircraft through FLYING Finance. For more information, email info@flyingfinance.com.