The Chevy-Based Plane Car That Proves Not All Custom Builds Are Born Equal
11 Nov 2020, 14:05 UTC ·
Home > News > Coverstoryby Elena Gorgan 
The Plane Car has been in the media since 2015 and Mark Ray, the brains behind it, for even longer than that, thanks to his previous creation, the Boat Car. Ray is an Atlanta-based businessman who owns a shredding business but has imagination to spare when it comes to putting together stuff that doesn’t belong together and making it road-legal.
The Plane Car is one such thing. It’s part 1999 Chevrolet Tracker, part 2003 Cirrus SR22, a hybrid automobile that looks like a plane but, even if wanted to, could no longer fly because its wings have been cut off. In the least poetic or figurative way.
Ray came up with the idea for it after his daughter noticed that he was growing bored with the Boat Car. He went back to the drawing board and designed something along the same lines, only that, this time, he made a caroplane.
As he explains in the video below, a 2015 interview, he was never the kind to get his hands dirty. That is to say, Ray is not a fabricator, which explains why you probably never heard his name before, especially if you’re into custom builds. Ray is basically the man with the idea and the money to pay for it: in this instance, the Plane Car was built by Steve West of Flex-Fab and Brandon Geddings of Controlled Motors, with the interior done by Mike Rivera of Rivera’s Upholstery.
They cut the front of the plane and the Tracker in half, and then proceeded to create the hybrid over the course of five months. The pillars and the roof of the Tracker were removed, the front end was melded onto the plane and the resulting chassis was plopped onto the Chevy’s platform. This created a very spacious interior (the Plane Car still has the windscreen and the canopy of the plane), with a single bucket seat for the driver, plenty of cargo room and two additional seats in the back.
To make the build more in keeping with the aviation theme, the builders kept the integrated parachute system and its overhead ripcord, but removed the explosive rocket. They also added a chopped Cessna propeller in front, which spins freely at high speeds.
The drivetrain remains stock: the Tracker’s 1.6-liter four-cylinder engine with four-speed automatic transmission. The Plane Car has air-conditioning, sirens, PA system, and backup camera, which must come very in handy considering it’s incredibly long. It’s also road-legal, with side mirrors, seatbelts and turning lights, and the propeller and wings cut short so that it doesn’t go ripping into other cars in traffic.
Until 2018, Ray used it as his daily driver, even dropping off his kids to school in it. Also until then, he was saying he would never sell it because he was too attached to it, unless someone came along to throw a bucketload of money at him. Life does have a funny way of making even the best of us regret definitive statements like this one.
In August this year, Ray was again, for the second time in as many weeks, trying to unload the Plane Car on eBay. He had tried to sell it before, but bidding never met the reserve. With a 2018 all-blue paintjob, it was advertised as perfect either for daily commutes or advertorial business, and pricing was upwards of $10,000 which, ironically, was how much Ray was saying in 2015 he paid for the whole project.
Strangely, people weren’t interested in paying this kind of money for what was, ultimately, a plane that wouldn’t fly or a pointlessly oversize Chevy Tracker. This goes to show that, just because it’s a quirky idea, it doesn’t mean you have to bring it to life.
On a less underwhelming note, it doesn’t look like Ray is done. In 2019, he built himself a new plane car, this time fusing together a GMC Sierra 2500 pickup and a 1974 Cessna Ram 421B that had been used during the production of Black Panther. This one turned even more hideous or, if we’re being delicate, mind-boggling that the OG Plane Car.
The Plane Car is one such thing. It’s part 1999 Chevrolet Tracker, part 2003 Cirrus SR22, a hybrid automobile that looks like a plane but, even if wanted to, could no longer fly because its wings have been cut off. In the least poetic or figurative way.
Ray came up with the idea for it after his daughter noticed that he was growing bored with the Boat Car. He went back to the drawing board and designed something along the same lines, only that, this time, he made a caroplane.
They cut the front of the plane and the Tracker in half, and then proceeded to create the hybrid over the course of five months. The pillars and the roof of the Tracker were removed, the front end was melded onto the plane and the resulting chassis was plopped onto the Chevy’s platform. This created a very spacious interior (the Plane Car still has the windscreen and the canopy of the plane), with a single bucket seat for the driver, plenty of cargo room and two additional seats in the back.
To make the build more in keeping with the aviation theme, the builders kept the integrated parachute system and its overhead ripcord, but removed the explosive rocket. They also added a chopped Cessna propeller in front, which spins freely at high speeds.
Until 2018, Ray used it as his daily driver, even dropping off his kids to school in it. Also until then, he was saying he would never sell it because he was too attached to it, unless someone came along to throw a bucketload of money at him. Life does have a funny way of making even the best of us regret definitive statements like this one.
In August this year, Ray was again, for the second time in as many weeks, trying to unload the Plane Car on eBay. He had tried to sell it before, but bidding never met the reserve. With a 2018 all-blue paintjob, it was advertised as perfect either for daily commutes or advertorial business, and pricing was upwards of $10,000 which, ironically, was how much Ray was saying in 2015 he paid for the whole project.
Strangely, people weren’t interested in paying this kind of money for what was, ultimately, a plane that wouldn’t fly or a pointlessly oversize Chevy Tracker. This goes to show that, just because it’s a quirky idea, it doesn’t mean you have to bring it to life.
On a less underwhelming note, it doesn’t look like Ray is done. In 2019, he built himself a new plane car, this time fusing together a GMC Sierra 2500 pickup and a 1974 Cessna Ram 421B that had been used during the production of Black Panther. This one turned even more hideous or, if we’re being delicate, mind-boggling that the OG Plane Car.
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