FYI from MCI™

Cash coach rides on

Johnny Cash may have walked the line and fallen into a burning ring of fire, but when the show was over, it was his big, black MCI coach that welcomed him home and gave him the peace and quiet he desired. So fond of the coach was Cash that he even immortalized the 1979 MC9 in his autobiography.

The Man in Black is now gone, but his coach rides on in all of its original glory, thanks to vintage motor coach collector Dave Wright, converter Creative Mobile Interiors, and the Tennessee Three, Johnny Cash's famous backup band.

It almost wasn't so.

Wright first spied the coach on E-Bay, where it had been put up for sale by MotoeXotica, in Missouri, which had bought it from the American Heritage Music Foundation in Arkansas, which had bought it from Cash three months before his death. Wright, who owns other vintage coaches, eventually snagged the vehicle for less than its original bid price after the first sale fell through. Wright got the coach, which originally cost $553,000, for a little over $60,000.

He entrusted it to Creative Mobile Interiors, a converter based in Grove City, Ohio, with the request that the four-room vehicle be restored to its original splendor. The firm, which didn't have much documentation of the coach in its heyday, wasn't sure if such touches as the lace curtains and blue velour seating in the June Carter Cash compartment were even original.

And that's where happenstance came in.

Wright, who was still in the habit of scanning E-Bay for other interesting items, found a listing for Johnny Cash's license plate. He bid, won, and, when he contacted the sellers, learned that he had just found Vickie Wooten, wife to Bob Wooten, Johnny Cash's guitarist and a legend in his own right. She, her husband and Cash drummer W.S. Holland had traveled on the coach many times (often with Vickie Wooten behind the wheel), and were also planning their own tour as the Tennessee Three. Wright and Owen Connaughton, owner of Creative Mobile Interiors, invited the trio to Ohio to see the bus and perhaps offer a few tips on restoration.

It was an emotional reunion. And a productive one. Connaughton and his team discovered that the velour seats were done in the original "June Carter blue," so they worked to restore them, not replace them. They learned where Johnny Cash liked to sit and drink his coffee, so they decided to leave the table — with its ring from where Cash rested his coffee cup — intact. The Tennessee Three even offered an impromptu concert. "It was almost like Johnny Cash's ghost was with us," said Connaughton.

Indeed, even after restoration, few coaches have ever offered such a personal glimpse of an icon. The striking black exterior gives way to an interior that is also dominated by Cash's signature color of black — chosen, in part, so Cash could have a dark room conducive to sleep even during the day. The walnut in the stateroom came from a tree Cash's father chopped down on the family farm in Tennessee, which was used by Ulysses S. Grant as his Civil War headquarters. A lavatory wall is upholstered in the hide of an alligator taken by Johnny Cash himself. And a host of older televisions and eight-track tape players point to times when Cash, his family and guests such as Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson toured the country.

After Connaughton and his team finished the restoration (which included new mechanicals, windows, rechroming and more) in record time, Wright offered the use of the coach to the Tennessee Three for their tour, and old "JC Unit 1" has been highly visible ever since, running strong on an engine (the second for the coach) with more than 370,000 miles on it. Still, when the tour is over, Wright hopes to donate the coach to the Country Music Hall of Fame or other worthy institution.

It is, say Wright and Connaughton, a rolling museum.

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