Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Luxury without compromise. Forty feet of leather, chrome, and satellite TV, with a driver who knows the way.
Build Sheet
“Luxury without compromise is Rockstar's reason for being, from the in-motion satellite and incredible sound system to the comfortable couches and a well appointed wet bar. We only operate full sized, 40 or 45 foot luxury tour coaches, no mini busses, party buses, or limos, only the best for a Rockstar.”
Outside
Black over chrome, gold stripe down the sill, star on every window.
Inside
Cream leather, black cabinetry, blue light from the screens. Grouped by what you are looking at.
The Coach Itself
Rockstar is a 40 foot Eagle Model 10, built in Brownsville, Texas. Eagles are not built like a modern coach: no truck frame under a body, no air bags. A welded steel cage carries everything, the whole bus rides on rubber, and a two stroke Detroit Diesel screams behind you.
In 1954 Greyhound rolled out the two level Scenicruiser. Continental Trailways needed an answer, so in 1956 it had Kässbohrer in Ulm, Germany build the Golden Eagle, named for its gold anodized siding, with a rear observation lounge and an aircraft style galley. The plain fleet version with grey siding followed in 1958: the Silver Eagle, the standard Trailways coach for the next thirty years. The name and the eagle badge came from American Bus Lines, a Trailways predecessor. Production moved to Bus & Car in Brugge, Belgium in 1961, then to a new Eagle International plant in Brownsville, Texas late in 1974. About 8,000 Eagles were built in four countries over four decades.
The Model 10 arrived in 1980 as the first real redesign of the Brownsville era. A sloping one piece front cap replaced the Model 05's notched brow, the rear windows gave way to a smooth one piece end cap, the entry door and driver's window grew to the height of the windshield in 1981, and the dash was redone with aircraft style instruments. Behind the rear axle sat the new turbocharged Detroit Diesel 6V-92TA, the first Eagle you could order with an Allison automatic.
The plant nearly closed in 1979; Trailways sent Frank Hines down to shut it, and he saved it instead with a fifty coach order from Houston Metro that paid for the Model 10. Exactly 2,217 Model 10 coaches were built between February 1980 and the last delivery in November 1987, 300 to 400 a year at the peak and about 75 in 1986, plus 84 two axle Model 10S commuter versions from a second plant in Harlingen. Bare shells were sold for motorhome conversion, and 14 right hand drive Model 10s went to Greyhound Australia. The 102 inch wide Model 15 arrived in 1985, but the 96 inch Model 10 stayed in production because it fit tight East Coast routes like the Holland Tunnel. Greyhound bought Trailways and Eagle in 1987, the factory passed to Mexican owners in 1991 and built mostly motorhome shells, and a 2005 revival in Brownsville and then Tennessee ended without a sale.
Kässbohrer invented self supporting bus construction in 1951 and named the company Setra after it, from the German selbsttragend. Every Eagle inherits that idea: a cage of welded 1.5 inch square steel tubing carries the load in the sidewalls, with a thin fluted aluminum skin riveted over it. Even the baggage doors help stiffen the body. Six workers could lift the upper frame of the original Setra by hand. The raised passenger deck over a full length luggage bay, standard on every American coach since, was an Eagle idea too.
A modern Prevost or MCI is still integral, but the structure is stainless steel, the skin is fiberglass composite, the glass is bonded, and it rides on air. The Eagle is steel, aluminum, rivets, and rubber.
Torsilastic is a BF Goodrich design from the 1940s: a rubber sleeve bonded between two steel tubes, twisting as a spring. No metal touches metal and no parts come loose. The rate stays constant as it settles, so the coach never turns harsh under load, and because the body is cradled in rubber, road noise stays out of the cabin. There are no air bags and no leveling valves; ride height is set with a threaded rod, and coaches fifty years old still run their original springs. Owners put it simply: nothing rides quite like an Eagle. It is the reason touring musicians could sleep in the bunks, and the reason Eagle owned the entertainer coach market.
The 6V-92TA is a two stroke, so every cylinder fires on every revolution. At its 2,100 rpm cruise it sounds like an engine spinning twice as fast, with a gear driven Roots blower whining on top. It burns oil by design, about a quart every thousand miles, and the exhaust smells like it. Paired with the Allison HT740 it was the standard American coach driveline for almost twenty years. Good for 300,000 to 400,000 miles between overhauls, roughly 7 miles per gallon, and a Jacobs brake to hold it back on the downgrades.
By 1978 the Eagle was the tour bus. Its rubber suspension let a band sleep in the bunks at 70 mph, and a cottage industry grew up around it in Nashville and Florida: Florida Coach was the first to buy new Eagle shells for conversion in 1978, Roadhouse Coach put ZZ Top in a Silver Eagle in 1977, and Joey and Trent Hemphill started Hemphill Brothers in 1980 with two 1965 Silver Eagles and a $50,000 loan cosigned by their father. Their layout, front lounge, galley, bunk room, rear lounge, is still what a star bus means. Eagle held that market until Prevost took it in the 1990s, and the Brownsville factory spent its last years building nothing but entertainer shells.
Sources: Wikipedia, Bus Conversion Magazine, National Bus Trader, CPTDB, Curbside Classic, Bus Nut, IMCDb, Bus & Motorcoach News, Entertainer Motorcoach Hall of Fame, Rolling Stone, Texas Monthly, Saving Country Music, Sulastic, Detroit Diesel spec sheets, owner forums.
Booking
Whether it's a business meeting or a bachelorette party, your journey will be so comfortable and fun, you will be sorry when you arrive at your destination.
The rates are calculated by the hour, beginning when the bus leaves the terminal in Fort Lauderdale. There is a 4 hour minimum rental everyday except Saturday, which is a 6 hour minimum rental, if the rental is not completed by 6pm. The rate includes driver and fuel. Additional charges such as parking and tolls are not included in these rental rates. There is also a required 10% minimum gratuity for the driver.
Don't be fooled by the party bus or limo bus pricing, this includes true Rockstar service.