Funny Man Leno Is Very Serious About Cars, Motorcycles
Jay Leno, popular host of “The Tonight Show,” is one of America’s most successful comedians. That you know. What you may not realize is that Leno is the consummate car enthusiast. His big garage near Burbank is packed with sports, classic, antique and special-interest cars, old motorcycles, oil company signs and other automobilia.
When you walk in, you don’t know whether to dive for the bright-yellow 1913 Mercer Raceabout or ogle his five stunning Duesenberg Js. Farther on, there’s a rare 1915 shovel-nosed Franklin, with a Los Angeles-built body by Earl (as in coach builder Jacob William “J.W.” Earl, father of former General Motors design chief Harley Earl). Hidden in a niche behind a Rolls-Royce Merlin tank engine is a 1946 Morgan barrel-back three-wheeler.
Leno has nine of the legendary Vincent motorcycles, including the first “B” Black Shadow exported to America, a trio of Ducatis, two Brough Superiors, a rare Danish Nimbus and a bizarre German Munch Mammoth with a twin-cam NSU automobile engine. There are old and new Harley-Davidsons and a BMW bike or two. Right by the door is a 1918 Pope, a spindly beast on skinny tires with a one-liter V-twin and primitive brakes that look like they wouldn’t stop a Schwinn.
Other denizens of the Leno garage include a 1938 Lagonda; a brace of Bentleys, including a handsome Speed Six and a dignified eight-liter sedan undergoing an engine rebuild; a ‘30-ish Delahaye sports racer; and a ’32 Packard Twin Six coupe.
The high walls are painted with giant auto company badges. Everything’s in a pleasant state of disarray, and the cars all look, well, a bit used. And that’s because they are.
Everything’s registered; nearly everything runs. Blessed with an assigned parking space at NBC Studios, Leno takes a different vehicle to work every day. Three mechanics help keep things in shape, although Leno (who once worked at a Ford dealership and at Foreign Motors of Boston, near his hometown of North Andover, Mass.) likes to do things himself. He’s capable of starting and running everything, like his two Stanley Steamers and several aircraft-engined behemoths like a Rolls-Royce Tourer with a Merlin engine from a World War II Spitfire fighter plane.
Recently, Leno discussed his passion for cars with Ken Gross, director of the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles:
Question: How many cars do you own?
Answer: You sound like my wife. About 48, I guess. And probably half as many bikes.
Q: What was your first car when you came to California?
A: A ’55 Buick Roadmaster, and I’ve still got it. I never sell anything.
Q: Do you have any criteria for the cars you collect?
A: I like stuff that was ahead of its time, in its time. I tend to like orphans--car companies that went out of business. There were some great cars. Often it was just bad timing for some makes. I’ve always liked the cars that didn’t compromise, like Bugatti, Duesenberg and Bentley. That’s also why I especially like English cars. It’s hard to get them to work right, and usually, you’re the only one who knows how to do that.
Q: How do you find them?
A: That’s the great thing about “The Tonight Show.” People know I’m interested and they write to me with cars for sale. Most of the time it’s something silly like a Ford Granada, something you don’t want.
But every now and then, like a few years ago, a lady wrote me a letter that said that she had an old car: “I got it when I got married, but my husband died and I don’t want to keep it. It’s been in the garage since 1951.” That got my attention, so I called her and said, “What kind of a car is it?” She said it was a Duesenberg. A Duesenberg!
Then she said, “I have a mechanic from time to time check it over, but it’s never been out of the garage in all that time.” Can you believe it? So of course I went to see it, and it looked pretty good. She said, “Oh, yes, I keep it running.” I got in and turned the key and it started right up! Then she sold me the car. She knew what it was worth, but still, it was worth it to me. It was a wonderful car. Turns out it had been owned by the woman who had the Hope diamond.
Q: What sort of work do you like to do on your own cars?
A: There’s not much I don’t like, but I have gaping holes in my automotive education. I like tinkering and playing. That’s why I like old cars. They need a lot of tinkering. On modern cars, you just replace things. With old cars, you can fix things; you take them apart, clean them. Like, “Oh, I see, there’s dirt in there. If I take it out of there, it will actually run better.”
With a new car, even if something breaks, you can’t tell a broken part by looking at it. Usually a computer has to tell you. Then you just replace it. It’s boooorrrrrring!
Q: When people ask you if you have a favorite car, you usually reply, “Which of your children is your favorite?” But seriously, do you have a favorite car?
A: Not really. It’s like this: When you’re a guy, you always want to go out with the girls you never went out with. I enjoy reading all the auto magazines. I’ll read something and enjoy it, and I’ll put the magazine down and think, “I have to go drive that car now, to get the same feeling the author got.”
Q: But if you were stuck on a desert island, and you really could have only one car, what would it be?
A: I’d probably want a Duesenberg. They’re great to look at. They’re fast. Mechanically, you can actually drive them hard as opposed to a lot of old cars. And you don’t have to apologize. Modern cars are great and they can be a lot of fun, but they’re not my choice. I like some old cars from the ‘40s and ‘50s too, especially the ones you can actually drive.
[With some old cars] it’s like walking an old lady across a street full of Hondas: “Excuse me [he says in a falsetto voice], watch out, I just have an old person here.” With a Duesenberg, you don’t have to make any excuses.
Q: You often take an old car to work. How do you decide which one?
A: Now you’re asking the really tough questions. On a really hot day, I may take a car that’s air-conditioned, like my Citroen-Maserati SM. That’s a great car in the rain too. Seriously, I just try to drive ‘em all.
Q: We’re losing people with real mechanical skills like machinists, fabricators and welders. I understand you’ve established the Fred Duesenberg Scholarship at McPherson College in McPherson, Kan.--the only school in the country offering an associate degree in automobile restoration. Can you tell us more?
A: We didn’t win World War II because we were the best fighters; we won because we outproduced everybody else. Ford was building four-engined bombers using the same principles that they did on an automobile assembly line. Back then, we had plenty of people with the necessary skills: Kids learned machining and welding in high school, then they worked as apprentices until they mastered these trades. We built things that were very well done. And we did it all in America.
Take my ’32 Packard; it was built in Detroit, but some of the parts came from as far away as South Bend! The whole thing was made here, most of it under one roof. That doesn’t happen anymore, and it worries me. You think about another world war and you go, “Uh, oh.”
Q: Do you think we’ve lost the ability to make some things in the U.S.?
A: I needed high-speed gears made for one of my Duesenbergs. I couldn’t find anyone to make them. There wasn’t one company in this country. Every gear cutter I tried, all the machines had been sold. But I called a company in India and they could make the gears; I guess that’s OK. But a few years ago, this job could probably be done within a few miles of Burbank Airport, right here. I don’t know if that means anything to a lot of people, but it’s important to me. All these venture capitalists today--they don’t make anything. When they’re dead, there’s nothing left. Years ago, people made things, and they really lasted; there was a finished product.
Q: What can we do about this?
A: I don’t have a broad answer, but it you want to preserve these old cars, you need people with the skills to do it. We’re growing a generation of kids who won’t know how to work on old cars. So I thought helping train and educate some of them would be a worthwhile thing to do.
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Ken Gross is director of the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles and has been writing about autos since 1972. He can be reached via e-mail at kgross@petersen.org.
