A Cybertruck towing a giant bust of tech mogul Elon Musk has been spotted across South Texas, where it’s raising questions and going viral online. In a video posted Saturday, the bronze-colored bust is seen standing upright on a flatbed trailer. It towers over the Tesla-branded pickup with a personalized Texas license plate “3LEKTRK” pulling it along a Brownsville street. Yellow straps crisscross the statue’s misshapen head. They framed a stern-looking Musk staring back at the vehicles following him.
A French tech entrepreneur who prefers to be identified only as “Louis” who earlier commissioned a three-story-tall mural of Musk along the route to Starbase is behind the bust that’s been spotted across Cameron County. The 38-year-old Parisian confirmed via text Sunday that the statue is another of his projects. He said he’s doing an “official unveiling” Sunday at a Brownsville event called “ElonDay” and will eventually install the bust near Starbase, SpaceX’s Starship production and launch facility. Musk is CEO of the commercial space company and Tesla Inc., and the owner of social media site X. Louis said he wanted to keep word of the bust “low profile” but realized he “can’t help the virality.”
ElonDay is a free event for 250 people that will celebrate “art, technology and memes” on Aug. 25 at Pluton Brewery in Brownsville. An advertisement for the event lists several sponsors including media and cryptocurrency websites. “ElonDay is not just a tribute to Elon Musk’s accomplishments but also a celebration of the meme culture that continues to entertain and influence,” the event’s website says. “The event is designed to be a space for meaningful discourse and community connection, catering to both Musk enthusiasts and critics alike.”
The bust is based on the “Elon, I drew you” meme, an image that first appeared online March 8, 2019. What began as an odd sketch of Musk — eyes too close together, swollen cheeks, a tilted mouth — became an internet phenomenon. There were also sightings of the bronzed CEO in Bayview in the past week, drawing online comments ranging from “dictator vibes” to “that doesn’t look anything like him,” to “we love ’ya man!”
In a June interview, Louis said he came to Texas in May with the idea to commission the mural and the bust. Why not “push the craziness,” he said. He rented a plot of barren land along Texas 4 from Chris Lerma for $300 a month, paid a local builder “several thousand dollars” to build the cinder block structure and hired area artist Carlos Manuel Guerrero to do the painting. They completed the project a few days before Starship’s fourth launch.
At the time, Lerma, 58, said he wasn’t ready for the immediate attention the mural drew. Now he has plans of his own, including building a parking lot for folks stopping for selfies and, maybe, food trucks. “I need to clean up in here and this and that, but it’s a work in progress,” he said. “It’s gonna be nice, we’re gonna put our heart and soul into it.”
In June, Louis said he hopes the project will help people learn more about cryptocurrency and digital art, though it’s unlikely many who stop for selfies will make the connection. According to Louis, both the Musk bust and mural are tied to the ElonRWA token he co-created. ElonRWA is a Real World Asset token, a type of cryptocurrency. In line with the project’s quirky approach, a website for the token shows an animation of Musk smoking a marijuana cigarette as the site loads.
