BE55 pilot had a close encounter with an unidentifiable object he described as possibly a model aircraft.

Narrative

I was cruising in good VMC when an object appeared nearly in front of me. At first I thought it was a large bird but as it got closer I realized it was man made and looked like a large model airplane with one wing and one engine. I'm not absolutely certain it was a model airplane because the closure rate was very high. I was doing 180 KTS and it was either stationary; moving in the same direction at a much slower speed; or moving in the opposite direction. If I had to pick one; I'd go with heading in nearly the opposite direction at something like 50 KTS (based on the closure rate which seemed higher than I normally see when coming into a cloud). I saw three distinct and rather bright colors: red; yellow; and gray. I would estimate the object's size as 3-4 feet long and about 1 foot high. I didn't see any wings clearly enough to estimate wingspan but the 'fuselage' (which appeared to be round) was about 1 foot wide. I'm fairly certain that this was NOT a balloon; at least it didn't' look at all like any balloon I've ever seen from the air or the ground. And yes; I have flown near manned balloons as well as toy balloons before; none of which looked anything like this object. Given the high closure rate and perhaps my late detection of it; I never had time to take any evasive action; from initial sighting to passing off my right wing the elapsed time was no more than several seconds. Shortly after the encounter I described it to the Controller handling my flight at Lansing Approach and he indicated that he had nothing in the area on his radar besides my airplane.