How a 1956 Cessna became the most striking road-racing car

A man converted a 1956 Cessna 310 into a race car that took part in the 24 Hours of LeMons before later getting a third lease of life when it became road-legal. 

No, that’s not a typo – it’s a play on words.

The 24 Hours of LeMons – or just Lemons – is a road-racing event in the USA for weird and wacky cars worth $500 or less.

Not the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans, which takes place in – you guessed it – Le Mans, France.

Anyway, we digress.

The complete one-off vehicle began life back in the mid-1950s as a Cessna 310 before it was found in a junkyard more than half a century later. 

The former aircraft, which hadn’t taken to the skies since the 1970s, was snapped up by former police officer Jeff Bloch, who had a rather ambitious plan: to turn it into a race car. 

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The 1956 Cessna had been abandoned in a junkyard

Weirdly, Bloch isn’t the only person to convert a plane into a car. 

YouTuber James ‘Jimmy’ Web from Jimmy’s World bought a private jet that used to belong to Elvis and lovingly converted it into an RV – that he now plans to show off at various air shows across the US. 

But years before Webb had even happened across the private jet, Bloch – or @speedycop as he’s known on Instagram – embarked on a journey to turn a Cessna he found in a junkyard into a vehicle that could take part in the 24 Hours of LeMons. 

With the bodywork sorted, Bloch needed to source a chassis-donor vehicle – and one that had the correct dimensions to fit the Cessna. 

He settled on a 1987 Toyota minivan, which still required a fair amount of cutting, chopping, and slicing to find the perfect fit. 

Converting it into a car was no easy task 

And the chopping didn’t end there – Bloch also needed to cut away the Cessna’s wings and landing gear, while a sturdy full roll cage had to be fitted as per 24 Hours of LeMons rules. 

And to ensure the Cessna still resembled a plane, he even built a tail for it.  

The whole project was a real labor of love for Bloch, who had previously built 13 other cars for the racing series.

“We worked on it all winter – in the cold and the dark and the rain and the snow,” he told Fox News in 2013. 

But the hard work all paid off, and within months of kicking off the project, Bloch was able to take the car – dubbed the ‘Spirit of LeMons’ – to the Southern Discomfort 24 Hours of LeMons. 

Incredibly, the car handled the race like a pro – and finished 65th out of 84 entries. 

After the race, Bloch made some changes to the ‘Spirit of LeMons’, which resulted in the shiny silver bullet becoming road-legal. 

Incredible stuff. 

It just shows what you can do with a small budget, some know-how, and a lot of passion.