I Toured The RV Made Out Of Elvis’ Jet And It’s The Best And Worst Thing I’ve Ever Seen

Many Americans are obsessed with everything surrounding Elvis Presley, from his music (of course) and look to his lifestyle and the many vehicles he got around in. Many of Elvis’ belongings including his vehicles have found their way into museums or the hands of fans, but one very notable kingly transport did not: Elvis’s personal jet.

Elvis bought a 1962 Lockheed L-1329 JetStar and customized to his taste only months before his death in 1977. With no King to ferry back and forth from casinos and concert venues, the plane sat rotting at an airport for four decades. The rockstar’s JetStar was rescued from limbo when a YouTuber purchased the plane and turned it into a wild RV. I got a tour of the newly finished Elvis Jet RV and it’s somehow the best and the worst motorhome I’ve ever seen.

This 1962 Lockheed L-1329 JetStar was perhaps the one piece of Elvis memorabilia that people didn’t want. Where a stage-worn jumpsuit only requires a display cabinet and the King’s pink Cadillac or one of his Harleys could be easily floor displayed in even a modest museum, the cost of procuring a jet with Presley provenance and finding space to store or display it no doubt represented a greater challenge than most would-be purchasers were equipped (or wanted) to handle. And so, the jet sat at the Roswell International Air Center in New Mexico, slowly fading, falling apart, and rotting away as several auctions came and went by with the plane never leaving its eternal parking space.

Then in 2023, something bizarre happened. At last, someone paid $260,000 ($234,000 plus taxes and fees) for the derelict aircraft. That someone is aircraft rescue extraordinaire James Webb, better known by his YouTube channel Jimmy’s World. I’d best describe Jimmy’s World as being like Vice Grip Garage, but with aviation. James can resurrect seemingly the worst, most terrifying abandoned aircraft. It seemed only fitting that he’d be the one to bring back the Elvis jet rotting away in New Mexico. Instead, James crossed over into new territory by turning The King’s old jet into a spectacular motorhome.

An Early Private Jet Rockstar

The Museum Of Flight gives us a short, but sweet description:

The Lockheed JetStar was designed in response to a request from the United States Air Force for a 10-passenger utility jet. On September 4, 1957, just 241 days after the start of its design, the JetStar made its first flight over Burbank, California. The Air Force ultimately did not buy the JetStar in large numbers, but the aircraft found a civil market, establishing the form factor of the now common business jet.

JetStar customers included corporations, the U.S. Air Force (as variants C-140A/B-LM and VC-140B-LM), the U.S. Navy (as variant UV-1), the FAA, NASA, and the governments of Canada, Germany, Indonesia, Iran, Kuwait, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. Following two initial prototypes, a total of 202 production JetStars were manufactured by the Lockheed-Georgia Company of Marietta, Georgia.

The JetStar was an early entry into aircraft that we know as private jets today. It wasn’t the first private jet, but the JetStar was earlier to market than the North American Saberliner and the Lear 23. Some say it’s the first private jet, but it’s notable that the Morane-Saulnier MS.760 came earlier in 1952. What is true is that the JetStar was the first mass-produced private jet and it helped rocket private jet travel into popularity. Famed individuals like the Shah of Iran and President Richard Nixon hitched rides in them.

The Aviation History & Technology Center explains that the JetStar also used to serve as Air Force One:

The United States military ordered 16 of the JetStars and gave them the designation C-140. Several of the C-140s were used to test navigational aids and communications, but most were used for VIP transport as the VC-140. All American presidents from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan used the Air Force VC-140 version of the JetStar, with the plane flying under the call sign “Air Force One” when the Commander in Chief was on board. Lyndon Johnson was especially fond of the aircraft as it was small enough to land directly at his ranch in Texas. In addition to the U.S.A.F, many foreign governments, large corporations, celebrities, and wealthy individuals utilized the JetStar to travel with speed and comfort.

That brings us to the JetStar Elvis had. The King purchased this 1962 Lockheed L-1329 JetStar on December 22, 1976 for $840,000. This was reportedly the third jet in what was then Elvis’ fleet and it’s been reported that Elvis had the aircraft’s interior designed to his exacting specifications. His other jets at the time were Convair 880 “Lisa Marie” and another JetStar named “Hound Dog 2.”

I say “reported” because one of the aircraft’s previous owners, Roy McKay, says that he was the one to fill the aircraft with velvet seats, shagpile carpeting, wood panels, and gold trim. As CNN Travel reports, the FAA has no record of the aircraft undergoing an interior refurbishment. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to be known for sure what Elvis even did with this aircraft. There don’t appear to be photos of Elvis even with the jet, which means there’s a chance he may never even have stepped foot in it. Elvis sold the jet in the spring of 1977 before he passed in August of that year. That means he owned it for just a few months.

Perhaps that’s why this jet never really had a good life post-Elvis. The jet flew for a Saudi Arabian company for a few years before it touched down at the Roswell International Air Center, where it would never take off ever again. The jet has passed through several hands over the years but it would forever be stuck in Roswell. The owner before Webb was Jim Gagliardi, who spent $498,000 on the aircraft about seven years ago and then did nothing with it. The reason why will be clear really quickly.

Liberated From Its Desert Jail

If there’s anyone who could save The King’s JetStar it would be James Webb. He goes around America saving old abandoned airplanes from a life of ruin. Webb’s Jimmy’s World YouTube channel has over 476,000 subscribers and 344 videos all dedicated to saving forgotten aircraft. Webb is also a step above some of the other restoration channels because he also actually flies the aircraft he saves.

Unfortunately, making the Elvis jet airworthy again was a project even Jimmy’s World couldn’t handle. Webb had AeroDesign Services inspect the jet and the tally started ratcheting up quickly. An inspection of the aircraft would have been $80,000 alone plus another $20,000 for a different inspection to check for corrosion and cracks in the aircraft’s structure. That’s $100,000 just for experts to tell Webb what was wrong with the plane.

From there, Webb figured he would spend $120,000 undoing all of the damage from sitting abandoned for four decades. The windows were clouded over, the jet had holes in its fuselage, and the whole thing needed to be stripped down and painted. Webb would have then moved to fixing the broken control surfaces and flight controls, which he believed would run another $450,000, and fixing the broken landing gear was going to cost $360,000 all by itself.

Mind you, I haven’t even gotten to the mechanical bits. The JetStar was powered by four Pratt & Whitney JT12A-8 turbojets housed in special pods. These engines were good for 3,300 pounds of thrust each. There was but one problem: All of the engines and their pods were removed! Webb figured finding these engines would be nearly impossible, but if he did, he’d probably spend another $2.2 million fitting them to the aircraft and getting them ready for flight. He’d then spend another $1.5 million fixing the aircraft’s avionics and electrical system.

From there, Webb would then have to pay to take care of Airworthiness Directives affecting the aircraft and then pay even more for testing. In total, the expected cost to make this plane airworthy was about $5.7 million, and that assumed he could find engines and didn’t have to battle unknown corrosion issues. But even then, Webb wouldn’t even be able to fly the aircraft most places in the United States due to the fact that the turbojets wouldn’t comply with noise restrictions.

So, Elvis’ jet was too expensive to repair and wouldn’t be practical to fly anyway. What does one do with this information? Well, Webb had the wings chopped off and the fuselage put on a truck so that it could be taken away and turned into a motorhome. Maybe the aircraft won’t fly ever again, but it could be recycled into something different.

The Elvis Jet RV

Webb and his crew then spent 18 months on an ambitious project to turn the jet into a motorhome.

Back in 2022, an abandoned 1999 Coachmen Sportscoach was donated to Wings Of Compassion and Webb had the idea of restoring the motorhome so that the families of veterans displaced by hurricanes can stay in it. Unfortunately, while Webb, Grizzly, and his team were able to get the motorhome running, they weren’t able to get the coach reliable and livable.

After over a year of trying to make the motorhome nice again and failing over and over they decided to scrap the motorhome. Thankfully, while they weren’t able to make a rolling shelter for veterans, they did raise $40,000 and airdropped tons of food and goods to families in need, so the whole thing wasn’t a total loss.

As a bonus, Webb figured out that the Freightliner chassis under the Sportscoach was exactly the length of the fuselage of The King’s jet. The bones of the Sportscoach were good, too. The engine is a rear-mounted Cummins 5.9-liter turbodiesel straight-six making 275 HP and the chassis came from Freightliner.

A bulb turned on in Webb’s head and he and Grizzly got to work. To craft the Elvis Jet RV they mounted the jet fuselage on top of the RV chassis. Then they connected the control columns to the steering controls of the RV chassis.

From there, much of the work involved making the contraption look good, from giving the RV chassis a shiny metal covering to recreating the aircraft’s original livery, which was done more cost-effectively as a wrap rather than paint. The team even created an instrument cluster that blends in perfectly with the rest of the flight deck.

The interior was left as it arrived from the auction, but was thoroughly cleaned and shined. The velvet seats are endlessly comfortable, and the aircraft even has a bathroom, a CRT television, a microwave, a surround sound system, and a VCR. Webb budgeted about $330,000 for the creation of the Elvis Jet RV, but it’s unclear exactly how much he spent. Certainly, it wasn’t $6 million.

I got to tour the Elvis Jet RV at AirVenture and I got to talk with Grizzly and Webb. I was thoroughly impressed with the build quality of the RV. If you didn’t look closely, you would have thought the wrap was paint. The team expertly preserved the interior of the jet, too, and you couldn’t tell that the plane sat for a whole four decades.

I even like how the automotive controls were integrated into the flight deck so that it looks perfectly normal. That’s why I call this one of the best RVs I’ve ever seen. James Webb and Grizzly took a jet that had been abandoned for four decades and turned it into an entirely different kind of vehicle. I absolutely adore this kind of upcycling.

On the other hand, the Elvis Jet is also horrifying. Grizzly told me they drove the Elvis Jet from Florida to Wisconsin. The problem is that they didn’t have the time to give the RV an HVAC system of any kind. That means it doesn’t have heat, fans, or air-conditioning. Oh, and the windows don’t even open and they couldn’t find a way to keep the entry door open.

Yeah, that means this thing is a freaking oven. Also, since the team decided to preserve the Elvis Jet as it is, there isn’t really anywhere to sleep comfortably. So, it’s simultaneously the best and the worst RV.

To be clear, I’m sort of just having fun here. The HVAC and bedding problems could be fixed later on and as I said, I love upcycling like this. This jet was either going to stay abandoned forever or just end up scrapped. Instead, Jimmy’s World took two broken vehicles, combined them into one, and created something marvelous. Webb says he’s not sure what he’s going to do with the Elvis Jet RV after AirVenture, but I hope he keeps improving it and driving it around the country.