World War II Airplane Converted Into A Motorhome Turns Heads In Wyoming

When Gino Lucci had to get to Greybull to pick up the Lockheed P-2 Neptune he purchased from Big Horn County, there was no question how he would catch his flight. It was a prime time to take the “Fabulous Flamingo” for a drive.

The Fabulous Flamingo is a one-of-a-kind motorhome. It’s the fuselage of a World War II-era Douglas R4D set on the chassis of an International 4300, powered by a Navistar DT466 engine (since everyone keeps asking).

It’s 38 feet long, over 12 feet tall, has a maximum speed of around 70 mph, and gets around 10 miles to the gallon.

“We’re pretty happy with 10 miles per gallon, which is the same as a V-10 pickup truck,” Lucci said. “She’s not feeling good right now, so it’s closer to 7-8 miles per gallon, but the fuel quality picks up the longer we stay in one area.”

Thermopolis residents noticed the Fabulous Flamingo parked outside the 7 Lazy S Café and Bar. Lucci knows his motorhome turns heads wherever he goes, making him quite proud of his “labor of love.”

“My wife says they’re going to dig a hole big enough to bury me in it,” he said. “I’ve wanted to do it since I was 8 years old, decided to build it when I was getting towards 50, and took it on a trip for my 50th birthday.”

A Bit Twisted

Lucci is the owner and founder of Round Engine Aero in Nashville, Michigan. They specialize in restoring pre-1970 aircraft and supplying parts to the antique aircraft community, serving everyone from amateur pilots to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

The genesis of the Fabulous Flamingo was the NBC show Real People, which ran from 1979 to 1984. Lucci vividly recalls watching an episode where someone drove to the beach in an airplane they’d converted into a motorhome.

“I thought that was awesome,” he said. “A whole airplane turned into a motorhome. And I thought, ‘I’m going to build one of those someday.’”

Decades later, including 25 years as a specialized mechanic in the U.S. Air Force, Lucci acquired two vintage aircraft sitting in Rolla, Missouri: Ada Red, a Douglas C-47-DL that dropped paratroopers over Normandy on D-Day, and a heavily damaged Douglas R4D.

“She was in a tornado in 2008 that twisted, kinked, and damaged her beyond repair,” he said. “Since it lay on the ground for about 30 years, the bottom of it was corroded.”

Both planes were headed for the scrapyard. Lucci saved them both, hoping to preserve the history of the Ada Red while seeing the twisted Douglas R4D as “the perfect candidate” to fulfill his childhood dream.

“We pulled the truck next to the airplane, took a couple of dimensions, and figured out where we were going to cut,” he said. “We just started going from there.”

Lucci said he knows most of the people in “the warbird community.” None of them are interested in a project on the scale of what he and his team endeavored to complete.

“They don’t have a desire to do this,” he said. “Most guys aren’t going to do this. We’re kind of nuts.”

The ironic twist is that halfway through the project, Lucci learned he’s been inspired by a lie. The airplane motorhome he saw on Real People didn’t exist.

“We found out it was nothing but a movie prop,” he said. “They had a shower curtain on the back.”

Hillbilly Engineering

There’s no instructional guide on how to turn a World War II aircraft into a functioning and road-legal motorhome. When they started the Fabulous Flamingo project in 2018, Lucci, his family, and his team had to use their existing knowledge of vintage aircraft as a guide, and that wasn’t infallible.

“All the plans we had that were laid out went out the window when we started cutting the airplane, because we learned all the different stuff about how the airplane was built,” he said. “We rebuilt that thing probably three or four times.”

The chassis for the motorhome was easy enough. The dashboard, wiring, steering, and brakes from the International 4300 were kept intact.

The Douglas R4D was disassembled, gutted, power-washed, and slowly reassembled while the unique kinks were worked out. Lucci categorized it as "hillbilly engineering."

The project really came together during the COVID-19 pandemic. With nowhere to go and nothing to do, everyone redoubled their efforts to actualize the Fabulous Flamingo.

“We banged this out as hard as we possibly could,” he said. “We're talking 12-to 13-hour days. Sometimes you'd wake up at 3 a.m. with an idea of how we needed to do something and we’d have right at it.”

Everything from the original aircraft that could be retained was, and many things were and are still being acquired to add more authenticity to the interior.

“It looks like a motorhome, but everything inside has to be airplane,” he said. “All the woodwork inside is Sitka spruce spars from World War II airplanes. All the clocks are old military airplane clocks. We have a regular couch in there now, but we found a good couch out of an old airliner that will turn into a bed.”

The latest acquisition is a sheet of “First Lady Pink” laminate. It’s the same laminate that once graced the interior of Air Force One.

“The table we have inside will be remade into that correct color,” Lucci said. “We're a little weird about it, but that's how we want it to be.”

And everything from the bedsheets to the curtains is covered in a bright pink flamingo pattern, his wife’s favorite.

“Everything’s flamingoes,” he said. “Keeping in tune with the Fabulous Flamingo theme.”

And how much did this ambitious endeavor cost?

“We’ve put around $20,000 into it,” he said. “The chassis was relatively cheap, and the airplane itself was only a few thousand dollars. Most of the money (was spent) trying to get the airplane apart and shipping it back home.”

Totally (Not) Worth It

Now completed and roadworthy, the Fabulous Flamingo has become an iconic sight. Lucci shares photos of his motorhome’s road trips on the motorhome’s social media accounts.

Lucci said he’s heard from multiple people offering plenty of cash to buy the Fabulous Flamingo, but he’s declined all offers.

“Number One, it’s my baby,” he said. “Number Two, you have to be part airplane mechanic, part truck mechanic, and part engineer just to keep the thing running.”

The Fabulous Flamingo has some unique quirks that an RV mechanic can’t address. One of the early issues Lucci had to address was the motorhome’s tendency to weathervane, which caused the front to turn into the wind, a common phenomenon for grounded aircraft.

Lucci still considers the motorhome a work in progress, as he’s constantly upgrading and fixing elements to make it safer and easier to maintain. Even an experienced mechanic couldn’t just pop the hood when something’s wrong.

“Everything around the engine, like the turbo induction, is all custom,” he said. “A mechanic would know where to find the fuse box on an International 4300, but we had to relocate it because that part doesn’t exist anymore as a truck.”

The Fabulous Flamingo has air conditioning, but good luck fixing it. Lucci said he had to rebuild the air-conditioning system multiple times to ensure it worked at all.

“There are all kinds of little things in there that have to be done on it,” he said. “You almost have to have built it to know how to maintain it.”

Modern History

Lucci drove the Fabulous Flamingo to Greybull to see the Lockheed P-2 Neptune he bought during Big Horn County’s Public Surplus auction. He wanted to get a first-hand look at what he had to work with, which would determine its ultimate fate.

“You can see pictures and videos on the auction site, but we wanted to see what's there,” he said. “Can it be made flyable again? Is it museum quality, or are we going to find something else to do with it?”

Converting airplanes into motorhomes is an extremely niche industry, but Lucci and his team at Round Engine Aero are at its pinnacle. They used what they learned building the Fabulous Flamingo to help YouTuber James Webb do the same with a much more expensive aircraft.

“He bought a 1962 Lockheed L-1329 JetStar owned by Elvis Presley,” Lucci said. “(Webb) paid a huge premium for that plane, so he let us make all the mistakes first (with the Fabulous Flamingo) so we could figure out how to get everything done.”

They got it done in 18 months and at a cost of around $400,000. Ironically, the much-cheaper Fabulous Flamingo is still a better ride because the “Elvis RV” doesn’t have a bed, there’s no heat or air-conditioning, and the windows don’t open.

After looking over his new P-2 Neptune, Lucci thinks they’ll focus on restoring it to museum-quality. They’ll be back to carefully disassemble the aircraft and transport it, piece by piece, back to Michigan.

“Anybody can go out there and just cut stuff,” he said. “We take aircraft apart with the idea of somebody's going to fly this again, even if it'll never fly again.”

If there isn’t enough to work with inside the P-2 Neptune, Lucci will focus on preserving and restoring the front half, which he calls “the business end” of the aircraft. That’s the charismatic half, and the one that offers the most utility.

The Ada Red, which Lucci purchased along with the plane that became the Fabulous Flamingo, is on display at Round Engine Aero. After extensive research, they learned the entire history of the aircraft and its pilot, Philip Sarrette.

“It has all kinds of military history,” he said. “She dropped paratroopers on D-Day, and we know what group she dropped. We know (Philip Sarrette) was killed over Germany right at the end of World War II. We have pictures of what it looked like sent to us by the families of soldiers who flew on the airplane, so we know her proper markings. By saving that plane, we saved a little bit of history.”

The Fabulous Flamingo isn’t what it once was, but Lucci still sees it as preserving a piece of history. His one-of-a-kind motorhome is turning heads and making history as it traverses the nation, finding more planes and preserving more history.

“That was the whole reason for this trip (to Greybull),” he said. “We always have a backup plan when we buy something. If we can't save it, or something goes bad while you're tearing it apart, which is a high probability, we’ll see what we can do with it. If there isn't enough in this P-2 Neptune for a museum, we can make another vehicle out of it, at least."

Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.