What’s that you say, Bucky? You hate your job? Put your foot in it! You hate your wife? Put your foot in it! Your kids hate you? Put your foot in it!
Yes, for Jay and his many buddies, who fill the YouTube episodes of Jay Leno’s Garage with thousands of gearhead comments, there is no malady of brain or body, no sickness of man or beast, that cannot be cured by stepping on the gas of a primo V-8, particularly when situated in the chassis of Corvette, Jaguar, or similar vehicle of a fifteen-year-old’s fantasy. Who needs a “life” when you can have cubic inches?
For a certain type of man, civilization began, not with the Greeks but with the invention of the internal combustion engine, though Jay will make generous allowance for the charms of the steam engine, which does have pistons, after all, and can be even more satisfyingly complicated and hard to maintain than a flathead, or an L-head, or any other kind of head.
Is Jay right? Well, watch the video above, showing Jay piloting the more than legendary 1956 Jaguar XKSS, owned by Steve McQueen himself! I’ve never seen a happier man. In fact, I’ve never seen one so happy.
Jay Leno’s Garage has been running in various formats for more than a decade now. I understand there’s a regular TV series version, with, you know, stars, but I prefer the gearhead version that’s available on YouTube. The actual garage is Jay’s personal Disneyland, where no woman has ever set foot,1 and where his limitless obsession with every aspect of reciprocating machinery can run riot. “Look at those hand-cut gears!” he exults, displaying a steam engine from the early nineteenth century.
Because Jay, unlike most car guys, is a true history buff. In another episode, he shows off another steam engine, telling his visitor that this is—wait for it!—the actual steam engine that ran the generator for Thomas Edison’s lab in Menlo Park New Jersey! The dude stares blankly, but Jay isn’t finished. Look at these bolts and nuts! Hand cut! Hand cut! This nut fits this bolt, and this bolt alone, in all the world! Uh, good, Jay. Where’s the Ferrari?
Most of the best episodes for Jay’s Garage were done years ago, showing off his true vintage items—late nineteenth and early and mid-twentieth century. Jay is chock full of social history, pointing out that a massive Duesenberg from the mid thirties cost about ten times as much as the average American home.
Sometimes the commentary is implicit rather than explicit. Showing off the 2017 Honda NSX sports car, Jay harkens back to the original NSX (dating from the late 1990s) as the first “super car” that actually, you know, worked! All the “big cars” of the past, whether sports cars or sedans—the Rolls Royce, the Mercedes 600, the Ferraris, the Lamborghinis—were much more status symbols than functional vehicles, laden down with luxury features that never worked, while the cars themselves frequently broke down entirely, and cost a fortune to fix. So what? Any chump can buy a half-assed car that runs! Only a real man (that is to say, a rich man) can afford to buy an expensive car that doesn’t run!
Jay never gets tired of chuckling over the “foibles” (that is to say, the poor design and workmanship) of the classic marques. The Bugattis, yeah, they did leak oil, and they wouldn’t start on cold mornings, and the air intake was underneath the car, so that it got clogged with dirt and rocks, and they cost a fortune to repair, but, hey, it’s a Bugatti! Do you know how rare they are? And how much they cost? You say driving a Jaguar for an hour hurt your back so badly you’re on crutches? Hey, you drove a Jaguar! You drove a Jaguar!
High-end rip-offs are scarcely a thing of the past. In a recent episode, Jay fills us in on maintenance of his beloved, million-dollar McLaren F-1, which Jay repeatedly calls “the greatest car of the twentieth century.” Yeah, you have to replace the clutch every 12,000 miles (at, I’m guessing, around $50,000 a pop). Oh, and the “fuel cell” (pretty sure this is the gas tank) has to be replaced every five years, for maybe a hundred grand.2 So what? The car goes 240 miles an hour!
Despite a never-ending Jones for high-end penis substitutes, Jay will find pleasure in virtually anything that burns fuel and moves, anything from a fat-assed suburban sedan from the fifties—“she’s a good old girl,” Jay sighs almost incestuously, as the old girl grinds into third—or an unending succession of old-timey motorcycles, each proclaimed as “one of the most beautiful bikes ever made!”3
It may be all an act, but Jay is a vocal champion of the “principle” that cars, and everything else, should be made in America, although it’s clear that he knows the best thing that ever happened to cars (and motorcycles) was the entry of the Japanese into the automobile market, forcing both American and European manufacturers to deliver cars that actually worked.4 Another interesting tidbit from Jay: “Montreal is the most beautiful city in North America!” How “cosmopolitan” is that?
Jay is happiest driving down the street in an actual race car. Know why? Because there’s only one seat! You can’t take anyone with you! It’s just you, man and machine! “Looking down that long hood makes me feel like I’m a fighter pilot. I like to sneak up behind other drivers like I’m going to blast them with my machine guns!” If only, Jay! If only life were perfect!
1. Not entirely true. There was, for sure, at least one woman, who had a restored, mid-fifties BMW.
2. In the video, Jay holds up the fuel cell, which looks to me to be made out of plastic-impregnated cardboard. Maybe it isn’t, but that’s what it looks like.
3. “I like a bike you can see through!” Jay states with emphasis, as if proclaiming a fundamental principle of, well, motorcycle appreciation.
4. When the Japanese first considered entering the market for high-end manufactured products in the U.S.—not just for cars but for copiers, etc.—the big argument against it was that they could never compete with the nationwide network of repair and support staff that U.S. companies had established over the decades. So the Japanese asked themselves, “what if our products never broke down?”
