EL PASO, Texas — El Paso automotive detailer Anthony Aguilar of Revive Auto Solutions has been hand-picked for the 2023 Air Force One Detailing Team at Seattle’s Museum of Flight, July 10-15, according to a press release.
Led by the “Detailer of Air Force One,” Renny Doyle, the 2023 team consists of the most experienced and proven members of his elite Detail Mafia who, for the past 20 years, have been caretakers of the iconic plane after preserving and protecting its exterior since 2003.
For more than a decade, it lived on the open tarmac at Seattle’s Museum of Flight, exposed to Seattle’s notorious climate.
Today the plane is on display inside the open-air Aviation Pavilion, but it is still exposed to moisture and Seattle’s cold winter weather conditions.
Every year when the team comes to work on it, the paint has begun to show signs of weathering and the brightwork has begun to dull, even though they use a one-year protective coating to tie it over until the next year.
The plane is a specially built Boeing VC-137B SAM (Special Air Missions) 970, delivered in 1959 as the first presidential jet.
It served as a flying Oval Office for Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, and also entertained many international VIPs such as Nikita Khrushchev and Henry Kissinger.
Also on the agenda are five additional historic aircraft the team has been restoring over the past two decades including the Boeing B-29 Superfortress “T-Square 54,” the Concorde G-BOAG “Alpha Golf,” the Boeing 727 “Serial No. 001” and the Lockheed 1049G Super Constellation “Connie.”
Aguilar and other team members are successful detailing business owners who pay their own way to Seattle and donate their time and skills to the project.
Aguilar is a dually certified automotive and aircraft detailer and owner of Revive Auto Solutions in El Paso.
He has also been a member of the famed Detail Mafia, the most accomplished and technologically advanced team of automotive detailers in the U.S., and artisans in the care and maintenance of automotive paint and automotive interiors.
This is Aguilar’s first year on the AFO team, although he served on the Hagerty Motorlux and The Quail Motorsports Gathering teams at Monterey Car Week last August — another extremely prestigious detailing project.
This AFO project is sponsored locally by Southwest Stinger and JER Custom Homes; Pro Choice Detailing Products in California also provides financial support.
“When I got into detailing, I never dreamed I would get the opportunity to work on such a prestigious project as Air Force One or Monterey Car Week,” said Aguilar. “I am honored to have been chosen for this project, and a chance to preserve a piece of American aviation history.”
Every spring, Doyle chooses his team members carefully from detailers he has trained and certified over the years.
Many of them are senior members of the team that go back to the original restoration project in 2003, while he tries to also bring in rookies every year who show promise in the meticulous art of paint correction and polishing one-stage paint and brightwork.
