A P-51D Mustang is on offer at eBay for the incredibly low price of $250,000. The problem is, it’s a wreck. The pilot was killed.
Now, at first glance one might think that basically rebuilding from a data plate is stupid. Maybe, but it’s been done. These are rare birds, and it may be worth the money to rebuild. Or at least, there are some valuable parts.
Assuming the wreck was rebuilt, would you fly it, knowing a person died in it?
A quarter of a million dollars is an “incredibly low price”. Damn.
After it’s been rebuilt it would no longer be the same plane where the pilot was killed so I’d say it would be OK.
Currently at controller.com, a flying example runs $1,675,000 to $2,145,000.
Unless there were outstanding mechanical issues with the plane, sure, I’d fly it. It would add to the thrill. Not that flying a P-51 wouldn’t be thrill enough.
But would you last the required eight seconds?
This Mustang crashed and burned 65 years before its data plate and a random assortment of parts were found in an English field. The BF-109 parked across the field was scrap metal with a data plate found at low tide buried in a beach on the coast of France. The guys in that business seem to think starting with the data plate is a fine idea. I suspect that a lot of the ‘whole’ aircraft out there have had so many years worth of repairs of dubious authenticity that the real perfectionists want to start over anyway.
Even airplanes of that vintage that haven’t crashed or suffered serious damage have had a significant amount of stuff replaced.
You buy, I’ll fly
Capt
Questions from ignorance:
Is this considered restoration, rebuilding, or creating a facsimile sharing a few key original parts?
How much does the recreation of the plane usually cost in a project like this?
Technically (legally), the data plate is the aircraft. So it would be a restoration.
No idea how much it costs. More than I have access to.
Now THIS is what I’d spend my money on after I hit the Megamillions Jackpot for $200M. Find some warbirds in need of work and fund it. But I get to name them!
Glacier Girl (one of a handful of flying P-38s) apparently cost a hair under $3M to restore to original condition. She was sold three years later for $5M, then two years after that for $7.2M. Where do I sign up?
So if a plane was found and the only thing that was damaged was that its data plate was missing then it legally is not the plane?
That is correct, it would just be an assembly of spare parts. Without the data plate, it’s not the airplane.
In the deep south the “data plate” equivalent of the redneck bass boat is the beer cooler.
Those restorations are just beautiful! I was surprised to see that the P-51B saw service in Korea. Can this be right? I know the -D did, but I’d’ve thought all the -Bs were scrapped long before 1950.
I should probably learn to fly first, but, I would fly it.
My fave is the C-model.
With the Malcolm canopy? 
