People look in the rear view mirror and they see
an airplane and they start panicking. The plane car
is the brainchild of 56 year old Atlanta resident Mark
Ray, who has previously built a roadworthy boat car
. My 17 year old daughter Brianna encouraged me to
build something else because she said that I was kind
of um getting bored with the boat car, which
is still a very unusual vehicle, but. Um
, I came up with the idea of building a
plane car. The vehicle was constructed from a Chevrolet
Tracker and a 2003 Cirru SR-22. The Cirrus was
perfect for me. It was just perfect, and
the aircraft, luckily enough, um, has a
fiberglass body which makes it a little bit lighter weight
but much more durable than your average aluminum aircraft.
Despite having the vision for his project, Mark was
happy to let others do the hard work. I'm
not the type of individual that gets their hands real
dirty and involved in ripping metal and cutting things and
whatever. I'd rather come up with the idea,
write the check, and then have the vehicle when
it's done. I went to a body shop and
he took the entire body off. It was a
coming collision where I live. Then I went to
uh another shop, FlexFab also in my area.
They fabricated the two together to make it one.
The next challenge was to make his creation road legal
. I put on side view mirrors, uh,
tail. It has headlights. It has a rear
view mirror. It's got a tag light. It's
got seat belts, and yes, it's past emissions
. The tail used to come out, I'd say
15 or 20 inches. I had to cut that
back so that the vehicle would be able to be
driven down the street without ripping into other cars along
the road. And Mark carried out the finishing touches
to the plane car himself. When I did get
the vehicle finished, I painted it myself and I
striped it and decalled it myself. This vehicle took
me about 5 months to put together. It cost
me a little under$10,000. Despite the vehicle's unique
look, it still acts as a family runaround.
I take my son to school in it, and
the school goes crazy. All the people just go
nuts when I show up with that airplane. And
uh I have a good time we go out for
dinner in it we come outside and there's a full
crowd of people. And I have to answer a
ton of questions about the plane, but that's,
you know, that's part of the game. You
have an unusual vehicle. You got to answer a
lot of questions, but I really do like it
a lot and I'm gonna enjoy it and pass this
one down to probably my son. But Mark could
be persuaded to part with his unusual mode of transport
. I've had a few people ask if it was
for sale. I told them not right now,
but if the right price, uh, was offered
to me, I'd sell it maybe, maybe,
and money talks.