Finally! The Elvis Jet RV Is Complete and on Display at the Huge AirVenture Show

It’s a pretty straight shot from Plant City, Florida, to Oshkosh, Wisconsin—1364 miles, using mostly Interstates 75 and 65. But that’s not the route that Jimmy Webb took driving to the 71st edition of the Experimental Aircraft Association’s AirVenture Oshkosh, the world’s largest fly-in convention which, last year, drew 677,000 people and over 10,000 aircraft.

YouTube star Webb and his trusty sidekick, the very-bearded Grizzly, wandered their way to Wisconsin, and why shouldn’t they? The pair was traveling in a perplexing RV constructed from a 1962 Lockheed JetStar once owned by Elvis Presley that had been abandoned for decades at an Arizona airport. Webb bought the jet—long ago stripped of all items necessary for flight, including instruments and four jet engines, though the red-velvet interior remained—for $234,000.

We telephoned Webb as he was en route to Oshkosh. “People can’t believe what they’re seeing on the road,” he said. “It would be easier to count the cars that didn’t have a camera hanging out the window as they went by, than the cars that did.”

Fuel stops became community gatherings. “We spent at hour at the diesel pumps at a Buc-ee’s yesterday,” he said, “with all the people asking questions and wanting to come inside for a look.”

It would have cost millions to make the JetStar fly again, but Webb had other plans: Chop off the wings and the tail, and make an RV out of what was left. He trucked the 60-foot-long, 42,500-pound business jet to Florida. With some help, he and Grizzly mounted the fuselage on the chassis of a donated diesel-powered motorhome, pledging to have the project completed in time to drive to AirVenture, which began Monday and runs through Sunday. And they did, zig-zagging to multiple Bass Pro Shop locations roughly en route from the Elvis Jet construction site in Plant City, to meet and greet YouTube fans.

There was also one inevitable stop: Graceland, Elvis’ longtime home-turned-tourist-attraction in Memphis.

We’ve covered the story here and here, beginning in January of last year. We even paid the project a visit here in May of this year—if you look at the grim-looking photos from that story, and compare them to the finished product, it’s hard to believe the progress Webb made.

If you’re just joining us: Jimmy Webb is a Tampa-based, full-time YouTube content creator, for a channel called Jimmy’s World. Webb has pinpointed a profitable niche in the crowded online video universe, producing one or two videos a week that have him typically discovering an abandoned airplane, and sometimes buying it and trying to make it fly, which is as sketchy as it sounds. He’s found everything from the band Motley Crue’s abandoned Learjet ($64,500, 2.7 million YouTube views), to a MiG-15 fighter jet (2.2 million views) that was for sale on Facebook Marketplace. He’s funny, and you don’t have to be an aviation buff to appreciate his work, as suggested by his nearly half-million subscribers.

Late in 2022, Webb learned that Mecum Auctions Kissimmee, the annual biggest-in-the-world, 4500-vehicle auction that happens each January in the Orlando, Florida suburb, would be auctioning off the Elvis Jet. Mecum offers financing, which Webb took full advantage of; after the purchase, Webb oscillated between what-the-hell-did-I-just-do buyer’s remorse, and genuine excitement over what he figured would be a jumbo series of well-watched videos. He was correct.

Adorned with a wrap that replicates the now-faded, red-with-silver-striped paint job up top, and a stainless steel-with-chrome bottom that’s accented by polished aluminum wheels, the Elvis Jet—that’s what Webb calls it—is downright handsome, a word we never thought we’d apply to the project. The cockpit is basically as it was found, with the left-side yoke attached to a rod that’s coupled to the power steering unit. Aside from cleaning up the startlingly well-preserved velvet upholstery in the passenger compartment, Webb and Grizzly left it alone. Even though Elvis never flew on this JetStar—he bought it shortly before he died on August 16, 1977—the connection to the King, no matter how fleeting, still seems to resonate with people who weren’t even alive then.

So the Elvis Jet will spend the rest of the week at AirVenture Oshkosh, “Until they kick us out,” Webb said. If you’re going, they’re located between hangars A and C.

And after that? “I have no idea,” Webb said. “No idea what I’m going to do with it.”