THROTTLES FORWARD ON THIS MUSCULAR MOUNT

WE FLY: BEECHCRAFT KING AIR 360

- ROB MARK

As I stood on the Textron Aviation ramp in Wichita, Kansas, for my first look at the company’s new turboprop flagship, the King Air 360, I slipped back in time to a different era and form of transportation: cars (muscle cars as they called them). My pal Lennie had just bought a brand-new, fire-engine-red Chevrolet Chevelle and, to my amazement, spent his first weekend with it stripping off many of the stock parts, mostly the ones no one could see.

He changed out the wheels, lowered the front end, added a growly exhaust, and yanked the automatic transmission in favor of a four-speed stick. The 1960s marketplace offered a plethora of options to add horsepower and torque, while owners maintained the stock look of the original machine as much as possible. The auto-parts store we visited in Chicago one Saturday was as vast as a Walmart today. Noticing my obvious awe at the incredible collection of mods for any kind of car, a salesman told me, “Kid, they only build this stuff for machines that have withstood the test of time.”

Back to the present in Wichita, I realized the King Air—a muscle airplane of sorts—has certainly stood the test of time, nearly 60 years since the first model 90 took to the air. With more than 7,000 King Airs having rolled off the Beechcraft production line since 1964, King Air magazine labeled it the most modified business airplane in history. Companies including Raisbeck Engineering, Garmin, BLR Aerospace and Blackhawk Aerospace wouldn’t have wasted time and money designing retrofit options for King Airs if they didn’t see a market— and they were right.