Motorhomes provide the opportunity to get away from it all without actually leaving anything behind. Technology? Comfortable beds? The literal kitchen sink? Check, check, and double-check. But, as with automobiles, some motorhomes are a tad more out in, uh, left field than others. Some have outrageous luxury accoutrements, some manage to pack all of life’s necessities into an impossibly small box, and some just ooze a devastating level of coolness.
Several of these wilder quasi-Winnebagos have cropped up in the news lately, and we thought them worth highlighting. To that end, we’ve selected five in particular which really stand out — be sure to mention your favourite in the comments, and fill us in on any we missed.
Elvis Presley’s Private Jet, now an RV
Acting as the impetus for this list is a creation from YouTuber Jimmy Webb, host of “Jimmy’s World,” which boasts nearly half-a-million subscribers. The sad state of one of Elvis’ personal jets – he had at least three aircraft – was, by early 2023, well-documented. It’d been refurbished just months before his passing, but was eventually left to bake in the Mojave Desert at a disused airfield. Practically speaking, it would have cost millions to get the vintage craft airworthy again — and even so, its turbojet engine type is said to generally exceed modern noise regulations at most airports. What to do?
Well, if you’re Webb, you buy that 1962 Lockheed Jetstar for roughly a quarter-million dollars, saw the wings and tail fin off, and take 18 months to turn it into a driveable motorhome. As one does. Recently unveiled at the 2024 Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin in late July, the machine sits on a Freightliner chassis with a rear-mounted Cummins turbodiesel providing the grunt. Its interior has been restored to Elvis-spec (which is to say, with plenty of red velour) and is packed with period-correct finishing touches. TCB in a flash, baby.
Webb plans to tour the thing around various events and Elvis-related institutions like Graceland, and has said he’s also considered renting it out, Airbnb-style.
EarthRoamer SX Explore: Overlanding to the Extreme
What’s that? You’d like to have a commercial-grade Chevy packed with overlanding gear, off-road kit, and a rainfall shower? Right this way to the EarthRoamer showroom, please. The bonkers SX Explore (handcrafted in Colorado and built custom to order, of course) represents the zenith of today’s overlanding craze. It uses a Chevrolet 6500 four-wheel-drive chassis, complete with a 6.6L turbodiesel engine, as its base — and things only get more, erm, robust from there.
Large swaths of carbon-fibre are used in its construction to keep a lid on weight, if not price, with each body crafted through a vacuum-infusion process which technically creates a monocoque (go ahead and brag that yer motorhome has ties to an F1 race car, if you want). This is significantly better than the poor-quality tat vomited out by mass-market RV factories — I can say that because I owned a 40-footer for nearly a decade, and can personally attest to the shocking lack of build quality given the price of these things, a trait which has apparently gotten worse since the pandemic.
I digress. An EarthRoamer SX can hold 100 gallons of diesel, 120 gallons of fresh water, has an 18,000-watt-hour battery bank, and its 43-inch tires on beadlock wheels mean you can literally camp wherever you want.
Yup! Slide-in Camper for a Geo Tracker
This is an example of the tiny-home movement wrought large. A YouTuber named Larry, a man said to have quit the rat race is search of a better work-life balance, has built a slide-in camper for his Geo Tracker (née Chevy Tracker, GMC Tracker, Suzuki Sidekick, Asüna Sunrunner, Pontiac Sunrunner — yes, there were that many rebadges of the thing at various points in Canada). Built from scratch with lumber and plywood, the little camper is attached with turnbuckles and covers all the basics of camping, with an emphasis on “basic.” Hey, at least yer off the ground.
Home, Sweet Whoa: Marchi Mobile Elemment Palazzo Superior
Internet users may have seen this thing in pop-up ads and assumed it is some sort of unholy creation by an AI generator with too much time on its hands. In fact, the Austrian-based build shop bills this machine an extravagant road-tripper, complete with two-storey party areas and a literal pop-up nightclub. Your author particularly enjoys that round front window, a surface which was once cleared by a trio of wipers operating in something of an infinite circle. From what we can see, a regular blade resides there in more recent photos.
Talk About All-in-One—Meet the Boaterhome
We always enjoy a good pun around here, so the title of this creation delights us all. Based on the third-generation body-on-frame Ford Econoline, the people behind the Boaterhome chopped and stretched that van into shape, then gave it commercial-style axles to increase payload and improve weight distribution. Around back, one will find a boat trailer integrated into the design, one meant to accept a fiberglass cabin cruiser. Loading that thing onto the trailer connects it with the van, and opening the cabin cruiser’s front window creates a walkway from stem to stern. Presto! Boaterhome.
The styling choices are tremendous call-backs to the Radwood era, and fit perfectly with the entire vibe of this build. Once on the water, the 28-foot boat’s stock Mercury MerCruiser 350 is said to make about 260 horsepowe, which can send the vessel to clips of 45 miles per hour (39 knots, or 72 km/h). On land, a Ford V8 displacing a familiar 460 cubic inches works with a three-speed automatic to move it all down the road. Guess the paint job isn’t the only thing that’s retro.
Sign up for our newsletter Blind-Spot Monitor and follow our social channels on X, Tiktok and LinkedIn to stay up to date on the latest automotive news, reviews, car culture, and vehicle shopping advice.