Joining the Mafia 112
his McLaren F1 wasn’t fast enough, and he didn’t want to
buy a group of islands, so he decided to buy a black Aero
L-39 Albatros. The Albatros was an aircraft that was used
to train fighter pilots in eastern Europe during the Cold
War. With an airframe from former Czechoslovakia, a jet
engine from Ukraine, and avionics from Russia, it was a
true product of the Soviet Union.^113
Elon used the Albatros for fun to chase other planes in
the Nevada desert. “Literally, it was just like in Top Gun,” he
said. “You’re no more than a couple of hundred feet above
the ground, following the contour of the mountains. We
came up to a mountain, did a vertical climb up the side of it,
inverted. Turned upside down. Yeah, that was fun. It’s like
a roller coaster. Only you go much farther up and down.
But your butt hurts if you fly in it for more than an hour.
The seats are really hard.”^114