The Fabulous Flamingo RV Is the Love Child of a War Aircraft and a Truck, All American

World, meet the Fabulous Flamingo, an RV like few others out there. It is legally a Class A motorhome, but the body comes from the fuselage of an American warplane, welded to the chassis of an American truck, an International DuraStar delivery truck. The Fabulous Flamingo, as builder Gino Lucci puts it, is as American as it gets, and made of pure love.

Well, love and a lot of hard work, and what Lucci calls a “hillbilly scientific” approach.

The idea for such a Frankenstein RV is not new, and neither is its application. Lucci himself had always dreamed of building his own motorhome because that was family tradition. When he started out his aircraft salvage company in Nashville, Michigan, he would always find birds that he thought would have been perfect for the job, but he never got around to it.

Until now.

A few years ago, his son informed him that he’d come across a fleet of discarded warplanes in Missouri, one of which was a 1943 Douglas R4D military transport aircraft. They traveled to see them and Lucci’s mind was immediately set on turning the plane, which had been brought down by a tornado and was never to fly again, into that dream motorhome of his. It wouldn’t be easy: just getting the plane was almost a year of negotiations, until he was finally able to purchase it “for the price of a used car.”

After bringing the fuselage back home and cutting it down to size (the rear and the wings were removed), Lucci realized they could use an old truck they already had for the chassis. The project was a family affair and they went about welding the two in the most “hillbilly” way, by simply placing fuselage and chassis side by side, and cutting into the former after measurements.

The Fabulous Flamingo isn’t the fanciest or plushest RV out there, but what it loses in terms of aesthetics it earns in personality. Lucci strove to keep the aeronautical theme throughout, from the still-working intercom, to the airplane’s access stairs, real plane sinks, or the warning cabin lights. The cockpit is also on theme, with gauges and clocks and an actual copilot’s yoke, none of which work, obviously.

Inside, there’s a family room and a kitchen, a child’s room in the former crew area, and the master bedroom at the rear. The bathroom has a bathtub, too, because Lucci’s wife specifically requested it. Total living space is 300 square feet (28 square meters). Even if the finishes are not top notch because most of the stuff inside is salvaged, everything works wonderfully together – and Lucci says he’s more than happy with what is turning out to be a perfect family vehicle.

The Fabulous Flamingo draws power on the truck’s original engine, and even with all the added weight of the fuselage, it can still go as fast as 85 mph (137 kph). That said, Lucci would rather he’d keep it at 60-70 mph (96.5-113 kph) for the sake of everyone on the road. He has a point, too: the RV is huge, at 12.6 feet (3.8 meters) tall and 38 feet (11.6 meters) long, and 17,000 pounds (7,771 kilograms).

Lucci introduced the Fabulous Flamingo, which was named this way because his wife has a thing for pink birds, in September 2020, after a couple of years of work on it and an estimated $20,000 invested into the project, including what he paid for the fuselage. It is fully road-legal, and he’s using it to travel with the family across the U.S. and, we assume, spread the joy. How could your day not get better if you saw this “flying” down the road?