The Piper Cherokee 235 was introduced in 1963 competing with the Cessna 182 for the four-place aircraft market share that the original Cherokee could not fulfill.
Piper added a stretched wing and 6-cylinder O-540 engine to the existing Piper Cherokee 180 and thus the Cherokee 235 was born. The Cherokee 235 also had an option to have a constant speed propeller added, and with the increase of HP and two extra cylinders, Piper included tip tanks in the stretched wing to bring the fuel total from 50 gallons to 84.
In 1972, Piper stretched the fuselage by 5 inches and thus the “Piper Charger” was born. With the iconic “Hershey Bar” wing, and the 235 HP engine, the gross weight of the Charger increased to 3,000 lbs. The Charger sported new throttle quadrant levers that Piper introduced in 1968, rather than the “push-pull” style throttle and mixture that debuted on the original Piper Cherokee.
The Piper Charger had an empty weight of 1,550 lbs. and with a max gross of 3,000 lbs. gave an impressive useful load of almost equally the same weight as the aircraft. This impressive gentry of the Charger gave birth to the following “Pathfinder” and “Dakota” models which included rounded windows and tapered wings respectively.
The increase in total fuel means that the range also increased to nearly 1,100 miles under proper conditions. The climb performance at 3,000 lbs. was about 800 FPM which is typical from a reciprocated Piper of that era. That being said, the Charger, although few in production numbers, still boasts impressive performance numbers even to this day.
