I love cars that have “soul.” It’s a concept that, in car circles, is fairly well understood, but outside of the car world, it seems a bit odd. “So, why does one car have soul and another doesn’t?” my partner recently asked me. The answer is complex, which is why, when I had a chance to chat with Jay Leno a few weeks ago, I asked the legendary talkshow host/comedian/car guy. Here’s what he had to say.
If someone were to ask me what soul is, I’d say it’s a combination of unique styling, performance, and mechanical connection with the driver. I think cars that don’t have soul are ones that are boring — they look conventional, they drive conventionally, and they “black box” their mechanical bits in a way that doesn’t really connect with the driver.
Anyway, who cares what I think? This is about my conversation with the inimitable Jay Leno!:
View this post on Instagram
The full interview — though, really, it was more of a chat — is coming to The Autopian on Friday. It’s part of a promotional effort by a company called Fremantle to try to get the word out about a new Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television (FAST) Channel — called Rig TV — on which you can now watch episodes of “Jay Leno’s Garage.” (Basically, you can watch the show on your computer just like you used to watch shows on TV. Here’s the ROKU link).
Anyway, that promotional effort got me a chance to chat with Jay about soul. Here’s what he said when I told him that sometimes I get guff when I say a car — a non-living thing — has “soul.”
It’s About Precision
“I get that… I mean, I like mechanical watches,” he begins. “There’s a wonderful book called …I think it’s called ‘Perfection’ by Simon Winchester. It’s a book on the history of precision. And it kinda goes way back…it covers clocks and watches — anything that was precision. And you kinda learn that any village in Europe… had one or two people who were craftsmen.”
It’s clear that precision is a big part of Jay Leno’s definition of automotive “soul.”
“You ever seen the movie ‘Quigley Down Under’ with Tom Selleck?” Leno asked me, marking the first of many times he made pop-culture reference that I could not follow (due to my own living-under-a-rock-itude).
“It’s a western where he goes to Australia. He has a rifle, and it’s a real rifle that was made … he could hit something close to half a mile away. In the 1800s! It was a precision [instrument] … and this guy made one rifle a year, so not many people had a chance to get many.”
“Then mass production comes in — well there’s no reason to have this precision instrument anymore when anybody can have access to a weapon. And the same thing with clocks and guns. We went from craftsmen to the industrial revolution, and now we’re kinda back into craftsmen again.”
Leno then talked about how Switzerland’s craftsperson-based watch industry was decimated when Quartz began putting batteries in watches, then he talked about how repairability is also an important ingredient in a car’s “soul.”
Fixing A Car Gives It A Soul In Your Eyes
“When you fix something…I always had old cars,” he said. “and I…was always able to get them home. If something happened I could pull over and fix it. By that measure, I had to take care of the car, and consequently I didn’t crash and screw up as a lot of my friends did, because the car was just an appliance like anything else.”
Sometimes A Mechanical Contraption Can Seem Like A Heartbeat
“The other example I always use: I got a friend who collects Maytag washing machine motors from like the late 1800s to about 1906,” he told me. “The whole thing was exposed — you had the agitator, the ‘chk chk chk chk’ — and since it was visual (it was brass and copper and nickel)…you’d run it and it was pleasing to watch.” You can see in the three screenshots above Leno acting out what the agitator looks like as it operates.
Note that I wasn’t able to find a Maytag Motor from the late 1800s or early 1900s, but I did find a sweet twin-engine that came out in the nineteen-teens (see above).
“Like steam engines — you get into those because they’re like the heartbeat — chug chug chug chug — so in that sense, if you wanna call that the soul, I guess that’s what it is. Somebody came along and they put a white box over this motor and called it a washing machine, and suddenly it could just be black steel, and…why would you want to look at [it]?”
It was an awesome conversation, and I could feel the passion at Jay used his hands to try to create a visualization of the precision instruments he was discussing. His knowledge of cars is astonishing, and his ability to engage you as an interviewer — and make you seem like an equal — was something I’ll never forget.
More on all of this Friday, when I’ll post the full discussion (and some fun we had afterward).
Well, now I feel like shit for letting several of my past vehicles expire. Sorry, 1970 Beetle; I should have bought you back from the insurance company and fixed you back up after you got hit from behind – your damage wasn’t so bad. And sorry, 79 Brat, I shouldn’t have been so cheap and I should have had paid to have your clutch replaced and gotten that alignment. I miss you both.
You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. Of course many older vehicles were not greatly efficient, fast, or well-built. But they were probably easier to fix overall than modern vehicles.
I’ve felt this way since I could drive on my own, but acknowledge that much (or all) of it comes from how we feel about whatever we are applying it to. For example, I work in advertising/marketing for a manufacturer of fairly heavy stuff. We have an early 2000s GMC box truck at our disposal that we have used primarily for taking our products to things like customer events, trade shows, etc. Over my 18 years at this company, I have found myself being the primary driver of this vehicle and have had many adventures/misadventures in it. Many of those events have either dried up or changed significantly over the past few years, especially during the pandemic. The result is that this truck sat largely idle for the past 4-5 years.
When we got a couple events on the calendar this past fall, I was put into the position of reviving it. It started with the mechanicals, but also went into getting the paint on the cab stripped and repainted (this is GM white – vehicles with this paint tend to molt like a snake after a while). We had new graphics applied, and then I set about to the cab, which (unfortunately) was a home to a mouse a few years back.
The truck hit the road again in early September and returned last week when I drove it back from Boston. During that drive, I got a perceptable vibe of…..happiness from the thing. It was out there doing the thing that it used to do, and doing it well. I even caught myself patting the dashboard at one point when stopped in traffic.
Does this GMC box truck have a soul? Can one accurately define what a soul actually is? Does something need to be alive to have one or is it more about the perception as experienced by others? Man, this is deep stuff for me to be writing about on a car site.
I think they are kind of like stray dogs. Much less inclined to bite you, if you give them some love. Might even become an old friend….
Not sure if anyone else noticed that Jay Leno collected autographs from his guest on The Tonight Show. I am guessing that collection is as impressive as his cars!
For me, the soul of any mechanical object comes from our connection to it. A lot of people call cars like Camrys and Corollas soulless appliances. I currently daily a ’21 Corolla Hatch 6MT. As the shifter was little vague I installed a short throw kit and some brass shifter bushings. This completely changed the shifter feel and my connection to it when I drive. A lot of people may overlook this car as an appliance but I love it.
Another example was my recent excursion to the shooting range. I went with a couple friends and we all brought 2 or 3 of our firearms. There were several modern rifles and handguns in the mix. But hands down everyone’s favorite to shoot that day was the Mare’s Leg. For those that don’t know this is a Winchester Model 1892 with a cut down stock and barrel. It’s been in several movies and TV shows including Firefly where it was used by the character Zoe Washburne. This one fired .38/.357 caliber ammunition and was more fun than anything else we fired that day. It had wonderful weight and the mixture of brass, wood and blued steel was beautiful in the sun. When cycling the lever you could feel its interaction with internal parts. The sound was metallic, heavy and mechanical all at the same time. The foley artists in most shows don’t get the sound of this firearm quite right, it’s lovely to behold. Of everything we shot that day, this one had the most ‘soul’.
I love this comment and it brings a follow up question:
Can mods and changes to a car add soul to the soul-less? Obviously you would say yes and I tend to agree even if I generally prefer my cars to remain as stock as possible.
I’m a bit of an animist, and have always really jibed with Shinto ideas that suggest everything has a soul. (See link at bottom of comment)
Rocks have soul, robots have a soul, trees have a soul, letters have a soul, drawings have a soul.
The trick then, when you are making something, is how can you make sure it has a good soul?
There certainly is a qualitative difference between something that is well crafted with love, and something that was made in a hurry, just for profit, (something I think that brought us all here instead of whatever random ai generated bullshit car site that are suddenly all over the place)
Like, you know how there’s the island of misfit toys? Too much of the world feels like that now- dollar store enshittification has come for clothes, food, and even our cities. I think the gut response is that stuff needs to be cheap to be affordable, but cheap doesn’t need to mean it has to have no soul(or no good soul)
And that’s why old Hondas & old vws are so fucking cool..
https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/japanese-dolls-animism
While not disagreeing, I have fixed a bunch of cars (nearly every one I owned from mid 1980’s to around 2000) on the side of the road, and I want to be done with that. I am at an age where I want a useful, engaging, functional, and reliable car. I am too old to want to fix something on the side of the road because it keeps breaking.
With so much of his life being full of fake smiles and hot showbiz air, I understand his need now to be in touch with something physical, that just works and is easy to understand.
I think Jay Leno did a lot of bad things as a person with a huge stage who played to the lowest common denominator BUT…
… I actually think he’s grown as a person. I have to give some credit to him for at least moving back in the right direction.
I think I’m gonna have my wife read this. Maybe it’ll help her understand why I’m shopping for the cars I am. My last car, I bought to make her happy, but now I don’t need to transport kids, so I can get a deathtrap that makes me happy!
I really hope you sitting on the left but your audio coming through the right channel and Jay sitting on the right but his audio coming through the left channel on the Instagram clip isn’t how the full interview is going to be on Friday?!
Here’s an interesting older article about robot dogs in Japan. Yes, it’s relevant to this, and the idea that a machine you care about can have soul. In Japan, Old Robot Dogs Get A Buddhist Send-Off : The Two-Way : NPR
I think any car or items can have soul. It is the interaction between item and owner that gives it soul. It is why a particular car can have soul for one person and not another. Most car guys like unique cars so it seems like the unique cars have souls but regular ones don’t. But at least back in the day all first cars had souls for their new drivers. But hey a doll, a old rocking chair your mama rocked you to sleep in, even the home you grew up in has soul because it is history, memories, family, and friends that create the soul.
Username checks out…
I had heard once that C.S. Lewis said that “we are not bodies with souls; we are souls with bodies.”
A search for the exact quote produced a lot of results that said Lewis never said that. So, I dunno.
But, to get back on topic here, IMHO, cars with sticks, by default, have more soul than cars that don’t. I almost said “automatically.” A manual forces you to have more interaction with the mechanics of the car.
And that feels kind of like the stereotype in the US where a British accent adds 10 IQ points to the perceived intelligence of someone and a Southern US accent deducts 10.
Looking back over my, now, 50(!) years of driving, in my mind it’s not so much soul as character. The really nice cars don’t really stick out. It’s the ones with the quirks that you worked yourself around (or fixed on the roadside) and still like, that leave an impression.
There are cars that are fun to drive and those that are fun to own (because they didn’t break your wallet). When those two aspects meet, that’s the sweet spot.
I once read (on the internet, so you know it’s true) that linguists consider the US Southern accent to be close to what the British sounded like in the 18th century. If true, maybe we should average them out so that no matter how someone sound, we think of them as reasonably intelligent. At least, until proven otherwise….
I have worked with colleagues from GB (and Europe) and customers from the South and they never sounded anything close to alike. Some of the Southern customers were pretty sharp, so I never discounted what they said.
I think there might be something to it, but I’ve also worked on plenty of cars that had no soul (most of them). Maybe that’s more of an IKEA Effect thing where the object attains a greater intrinsic value to the person from the engagement of assembly/repair. To me, it’s about connection—do I feel like each bolt and piece is part of me, do I get the sense of their movement and interaction? Does the vehicle inexplicably appear to heal itself (never needed alignments—would hit something with one wheel and it might pull to that side for the rest of the day be it a few miles or a hundred, but next morning, it would track dead straight)? Does it appear to have moods where it sometimes feels like it wants to be the Vanishing Point stunt double and other times like a tired old person and neither apparent mood can be tied to atmospheric conditions and was sometimes in opposition to the driver’s mood? I’ve only ever felt one machine like that and I have more doubts about the souls of some people than I do that car.
Does my car have soul?
I dunno. It’s got quirks, imperfections, and shit I ain’t fixed yet, so it certainly has character
“Just because you are a character doesn’t mean that you have character”
I have worked on my vehicle, but I think the moment I realized it had soul was when I patted the wheel after it withstood a particular code brown intact. I told her, “Good job, Harley”, and immediately felt both weird and calmed.
I’ve always said that things made by people who are passionate about what they are creating are almost guaranteed to have a “soul”. The BMW E87 1M is a good example.
Something doesn’t have to be old, or new, it just has to have passionate people behind the project. Even an intangible thing like a computer game follows this principle.
When something is created for the sole purpose of selling units and pleasing investors that’s when you come up with soulless appliances.
I own a Soul, so I know about fixing!
My appreciation for Jay Leno grows. Quigley Down Under is a perfectly enjoyable movie and is part of my Blu-Ray collection. It is also part of my Alan Rickman villain trifecta: Die Hard (Hans Gruber), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (Sheriff of Nottingham), and Quigley Down Under (Elliot Marston).
Explaining why he’ll cut Robin’s heart out with a spoon:
Guy of Gisborne : Why a spoon, cousin? Why not an axe?
Sheriff of Nottingham : Because it’s DULL, you twit. It’ll hurt more.
It is funny how the “simple” vs “complex” axis interacts with “soul”.
Sometimes the simplest things are the most soulful (manual transmission, lightweight, minimal gadgets) and sometimes the more (dare I say needlessly) complex things are (mechanical watches, the Maytag agitator, ICE vs EV)
I love this. Never thought of it that way before, but its true. The blood, sweat, and tears that we put into our cars it what gives it meaning. We give cars their soul.
I think this is true to a point. I work on my Kia and don’t feel much. I work on my ZJ and I feel like it has soul. I do believe you can only appreciate what you work for though.
I sure gave Daphne my 280Z a shit ton of soul then.