Cessna 210: prices, price cuts and days on market

Buyer's notes

About the Cessna 210

What it is

The Cessna 210 Centurion is the fastest and biggest of the Cessna piston singles: a retractable, six-seat airplane built from 1957 to 1986, a bit over 9,000 of them. It started as a retractable 182 with a strutted wing and a 260 hp Continental, and by 1970 it had grown into a wide cantilever-wing six-seater with a 285 or 300 hp IO-520 and a gross weight that lets you fill it. Turbocharged T210s came from the mid-1960s and the pressurized P210 from 1978.

It flies like a heavy, stable traveling machine: firm controls, a heavy nose on landing like every big Cessna, and four adults, bags and fuel a long way at real speed. Owners describe the 210 as the most airplane you can own with one engine and a Cessna parts book, with the caveat that the landing gear demands a mechanic who knows it.

Variants that matter for price

Model letters run 210 through 210R, with the letter following the year. The early strutted airplanes (210 through 210F) are cheap and slow to sell. The 210G of 1967 brought the cantilever wing, and the 210K of 1970 brought the full six-seat cabin, so those are where most buyers start. The 210L, M and N of the 1970s and early 1980s are the volume years; the 210N and later dropped the main gear doors, which removed a category of rigging trouble, and the late airplanes and the rare 210R carry the highest gross weights. Sellers type T210L, T210N and P210N for the turbo and pressurized airplanes, and a P210R is a rare find.

A 210 with a documented spar carry-through inspection, a recent gear overhaul and a modern panel asks well above one without.

What buyers check

The landing gear comes first. The hydraulic power pack, the saddles on older airplanes and the door rigging on pre-N models all have a history, and a gear-up landing somewhere in the past is common on this type, so look for belly skin repairs and a prop-strike teardown. The wing spar carry-through on the cantilever airplanes is now on every buyer's list after an in-flight breakup led to a required inspection for cracks and corrosion; an airplane that passed it recently is worth more. Corrosion also hides under the floor and in the tailcone, and the seat-rail inspection applies.

The fuel system, with its reservoir tanks and vapor return, needs to be understood rather than assumed. On the IO-520 and TSIO-520, cylinders and crankcase cracks drive the engine talk; on a T210, add turbo and exhaust hours; on a P210, add pressurization sealing and cooling. Value-adding mods include the IO-550 conversion, intercoolers on turbo airplanes, speed brakes, vortex generators, tip tanks and a modern autopilot.

Who it suits

The 210 suits the pilot who flies long trips with a full cabin and wants to do it faster than a 206 or 182 allows, and who has a shop nearby that knows the type. It is not cheap to keep, a poor choice for short grass strips, and more than a low-time pilot needs. Realistic cross-shops are the Bonanza A36, the Piper Saratoga or Lance, and the 206 if fixed gear and gravel matter more than speed.