Elvis' Private Jet Is Now A Bus, Thanks To YouTuber
A YouTuber has purchased Elvis Presley's private jet and is doing what anyone would do with a celebrity-owned jet: turning it into an RV.
James Webb, is a YouTuber (not the namesake of a space telescope) whose thing is flipping abandoned aircraft. He forked over 234,000 dollars for the King's old 962 Lockheed JetStar L-1329.
Just think what kind of stories that plane could tell. It probably still smells like fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches too.
Elvis bought the plane back in 1976, just about a year before his death, for $880,000. If you adjust that for inflation, that's a price tag of around $4.4 million.
While Pressley's private jet was once the picture of wealth, Webb will have his work cut out for him. The plane had previously been sitting in the New Mexico desert. That harsh environment caused the jet's exterior to rust.
Still, Webb has a vision, and he plans on taking the next year or so to make that vision a reality,
“What if we turned Elvis Presley’s private jet into Elvis Presley’s private RV – the King of the Road. This could work.”
This isn't just the best picture of Elvis, it's one of the greatest pictures in American history. (Photo by MPI/Getty Images)
Webb Has Big Plans For Elvis' Jet
While the plane can't fly anymore, it does have all the amenities a high-profile musician would have wanted in 1976.
“It’s got a water system so we can have a functional bathroom, microwave, TV, stereo system – all that fancy stuff,” he said.
That idea came to Webb after he toyed with the idea of renting the plane out as an Airbnb. Country music icon Dolly Parton does that with her tour bus for anyone willing to pay up $10,000 a night.
Instead, he told Fox News how he's going to make the jet roadworthy and then take it on tour to raise money for charity.
"We’re going to take an RV chassis, take the house part of the RV off, put it on that, so this can be the 'Elvis Experience,'" he said.
I hope it's the whole experience. Like you get to pretend to shoot at a small RCA television with Robert Goulet on screen. Maybe they'll have a photo op with a cut-out of Scatter, Elvis' pet chimpanzee, who was, by all accounts, a complete and utter hellion.
I would go see this and you would too. I'm not even a huge Elvis fan, but you kind of have to go to pay your respects to the King of Rock 'N' Roll.
Follow on Twitter: @Matt_Reigle