Model 160-Cessna was selling most of the single-engine aircraft produced in the world in 1962. With models ranging from the $7,495 two-place 150B trainer to the $23,975 Model 210B, the company had eight models filling the niches. What it needed now, the reasoning went, was a design that would offer more airplane for less money, and the answer could possibly lie in changing labor-intensive production procedures. The four-place Model 160 was to be priced at $8,450, between the 150 and the 172. Its unfashionably square-cut conventionality was more a concession to the economies of manufacturing than to aesthetics of its market.
Fuselage and wing skins relied on heavy beading for strength and low weight, and the strut-braced constant-chord wings and free-caster nose gear provided simplicity of manufacture. The prototype was powered by a 125 hp Franklin engine, and it took the airplane to 134 mph. The 145 hp O-300 Continental engine then in use in the 172 was specified for the production Model 160, and would provide a top speed of 143 mph. In a proposed military version--the 160M--a Continental IO-360 of 210 hp would push it to a theoretical 174 mph top speed.
Flight tests in 1962-63 showed the model had promise, but not enough to make the necessary production and tooling adjustments, so the project was eventually abandoned and the company went back to doing things the way they had always been done. The sole prototype hung around until 1974, when it was reportedly scrapped.
However, the salvage yard kept putting off the job, and a mechanic from Northeast Kansas bought the remains of the prototype a few years ago and has offered it for sale.