I am a little surprised at the Cessna 162 designation! ... What will the designation be for the "Skycatcher II"? The Cessna 165?
This airplane should have been called the Cessna 160 (although I think an earlier unsuccessful design already had that designation)! Then the Cessna 162 would have been the logical next step, in keeping with Cessna tradition.
The naming traditions at Cessna are a bit convoluted. The names used to always end in a "0" or a "5". The Cessna 120, 140, 170, 180 and 195. When they first flew the nose-wheel version of the Cessna 170 in 1955, they decided to call it a 172 to differentiate it from the tail-dragger models. Ditto the 182.
So it stands to reason that the Cessna 142 would've been the logical name for our current aircraft. After all, the still-born Cessna 140B had the same flaps, wing and fuselage structure. But the tail had to be greatly enlarged to compensate for the 40° Fowler flaps. That, along with other detail changes and the long hiatus between the demise of the old 140A and the new two-place plane is probably what led Cessna to use a new model number. They called it a 150 following old tradition, but breaking with the new tradition of using a "2" for nose-wheel airplanes. Obviously, it wasn't until 1978 that they finally called it a 152.
