Watch Jay Leno Teach Me How To Hand-Crank A Ford Model-T (Plus Our FULL Interview)

“INTVW OPP: Jay Leno for JAY LENO‘S GARAGE on RIG TV” read the subject line of the email I received in late September. The email invited The Autopian to speak with none other than THE Jay Leno, car nut and talkshow/comedy legend. I replied with interest, only to hear nothing for a week. Then I got an email back, and after being told it wouldn’t work due to my availability, I somehow moved things around to get things to align. Then I didn’t hear back for a few days, so I called the emailer. No reply. Then I got a call back. “SPAM CALL LIKELY” I saw on my phone’s screen.

Things seemed a little…sketchy at that point. Between the spotty communication, the call from a “SPAM LIKELY” number, and the fact that it was just a straightup offer to talk with Jay Leno, I had reservations. “One doesn’t just get an email offer to see Jay Leno,” I thought.

But, I figured, screw it. Why not just show up to the Burbank location mentioned in the email and see what happens. So that’s what I did, and you know what? The emailer was real! And a really nice guy from TV production/distribution company Fremantle. He wanted us to help get the word out that folks can now watch Jay Leno’s Garage on RIG TV, which is a free advertisement-supported TV station that you can watch online.

Sure enough, we just walked right in and BOOM. There he was: Jay freakin’ Leno ready to talk about cars!

Only at the very beginning were there light nerves, no doubt a product of knowing that Jay Leno is a master interviewer who has talked with many of the most powerful people in the world. I, meanwhile, was a fairly unknown dude outside of total car-geek circles. But within 60 seconds, all of the nerves disappeared, because Jay Leno has an incredible ability to make you feel like his equal, particularly if you love cars.

That’s what Jay wants to do more than anything in this world: Talk with car people. It’s why he’s a legend at car shows in the LA area, it’s why he was happy to talk with little ol’ me, and it’s why — among people who know him, like Autopian cofounders Beau and Jason — he’s known as just a legitimately good dude. (I’m writing this article from the SEMA car show, where Jay is currently hanging out).

Anyway, these were the prevailing thoughts from my interview with Jay Leno. He just felt like another extremely well-versed car guy, and not one bit like a celebrity. And this became obvious once the interview ended.

As you can see, it was really less of an interview and more of just a chat between two car people. The discussion spanned all sorts of topics. After I stumbled to find a way to mention that FAST Channel that I was there to promote, Jay hopped in to say, essentially, “Just watch the show,” and thus the real conversation began. The first question was about the concept of soul.

What Gives Cars Soul?

I mentioned this in my last article about this interview, but I’ll reiterate it here for those who didn’t read that other piece. In Jay’s eyes, soul comes from a few things: First, it’s precision manufacturing:

“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.”

“You ever seen the movie ‘Quigley Down Under’ with Tom Selleck?”

“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.”

One can also begin seeing a soul in something by fixing it. From Jay:

“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.”

Jay also mentioned how some vehicles seemingly have heartbeats:

“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.

“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]?”

Jay Loves ‘Noble Failures’

We also chatted about Noble Failures. My fiancee Elise (Not Her Real Name) had helped me prep for this interview, and she sent me an amazing article by the Beverly Hills Courier. In it, Leno mentions his love for “Noble Failures,” cars that were too good for their time — cars that flamed out quickly.

“The greatest noble failure is the Doble Steam Car,” Leno told me. “It’s a steam car, you get in, you turn the key, and then you pull away. Most steam cars, you have to get under it, light the pilot, wait for it to heat up…a clear improvement. But the trouble is it didn’t come along until 1924-25…in that time, the internal combustion engine [self starter] is really what put steam engines out of business.”

Jay went on to tell me that, with most steam cars, you’d have to use the pilot to heat up liquid gas into a gaseous state, and then that gets sent into the boiler to light. This was time-consuming, and Doble figured out a solution that was actually arguably better than even gasoline cars at the time! As Leno points out in our chat, gasoline cars back then required one to set the choke, set the mag, and then pull start the engine, which could backfire and break one’s arm. Electric cars at the time were good, but people didn’t have a place to charge them.

So the Doble seemed great…that is, until the electric self-starter for gasoline cars came along and made the Doble obsolete.

Duesenberg was another great example of a Noble Failure, as Jay told me. “Duesenberg would be the equivalent of a Bugatti Chiron or one of those cars…it was fast,” he said. The problem was: It was expensive. Like, really expensive.

Another was the Wills Sainte Claire — a vehicle with an overhead cam V8, bevel drive, declutching fan, and gear driven accessories. It was legitimately ahead of its time in the early 1920s. The only problem was: “Nobody wants to go 70 mph,” Leno told me. So though the Wills Sainte Claire was state of the art, it was expensive (in part because the company paid its workers well), and because it was super niche, once the small number of interested got one, the orders stopped rolling in.

Jay then gave credit to Lee Iacocca for devising the Mustang. It was a sweet sports car, but it Kept It Simple. There wasn’t independent suspension or some kind of swanky powertrain, it was a prettied-up Ford Falcon with a solid rear axle. Ford sold a million cars by just keeping it simple and focusing on styling. This simplicity is the difference between a success and a noble failure.

Quirky Cars Are Cool, But They Don’t Sell

I mentioned to Leno my own Noble Failure — the Carbon Fiber Wonder from Leipzig, the BMW i3. “Uh, uh, ohhhhh,” he replied, almost grimacing, placing his hand to his mouth to jokingly hide his fake-disgust. We then talked about how hideous BMW’s design language has become, with Leno ultimately saying he thinks my i3 may become a classic — after I’m dead.

From here, I asked Jay if he, like me, loved a car that nobody else understood. And in fact, he does! It’s called the Panard BT 24, a two-cylinder quirky French machine:

Then we started talking about odd French car features, odd fastener sizes and features that seem to make no sense at all! This weirdness, I mentioned to Jay, gives a car soul, but — he rightly points out — this also makes the cars less palatable to the masses. The average person, Jay told me, doesn’t even open their owner’s manual.

Then came a story about how Jay helped a man fix his BMW 7 Series’ flat tire on Coldwater Canyon road. Apparently the guy couldn’t figure out how to get the wheel off, so Jay showed him where in the owner’s manual — which, by the way, was still sealed — it mentioned the special tool used to get off the wheel’s center cap.

“He loved the car, but he just didn’t know anything…you know, if your dad didn’t grow up using a screwdriver, you probably don’t know how to use one,” he told me. “So you have a whole generation that never had to fix a car, so consequently they’re not that into it in terms of finding the soul of the automobile.”

What’s The Future Of Car Culture?

From here, I asked Jay a question a reader submitted — about the future of car culture. So much of car culture has been propped up by older generations — they opened lots of the car museums, they rebuild our starters/speedometers/carburetors/radiators, they run race series, etc.. What happens to car culture when those old-timer stewards of this thing we all love pass away?

“You have things like McPherson College where you get a four-year degree in automobile restoration,” Leno answered optimistically. “The interesting thing about the capitalist system is, when something becomes valuable, it becomes worthwhile. When I was a kid, you could buy a wrecked Jaguar for 800 [dollars], and a wrecked Aston Martin for maybe 1200 [dollars]…they were just old [sports cars].”

“My Lamborghini Miura, the yellow one over here, I got for free because the engine was blown and it wasn’t worth anything… but now as things go up in value, now suddenly automobile restoration is almost like restoring the old masters…a college like McPherson…we’re getting back to the era of the craftsman.”

Leno went on: “It’s like watchmakers. An electronic watch that doesn’t lose any time at all over a year, $25, $50. But a mechanical watch does the  same thing, sometimes 10s of thousands of dollars..but, if you like the mechanicalness of it [it’s the only way to go].”

Let’s Talk About EVs and Hybrids

From there we talked about the Briggs & Stratton car that Autopian cofounder Jason Torchinsky sourced for Jay Leno’s Garage (he used to do some work for Jay). “The Briggs & Stratton was always seen as something of a toy,” Jay told me, going on to say that the 1960s was, in a way, the halfway point in automotive development. “And that Briggs & Stratton was sort of like the halfway point,” he said, mentioning the single cylinder to run generator to run car. It’s primitive relative to modern cars, but at the same time, he mentioned, there were sold old cars, like the Owen Magnetics cars that were actually quite smooth driving machines.

Why Is Car Culture Worth Saving?

My final question was about why car culture is worth saving given all the issues it causes — pollution, traffic collisions, infrastructure issues. Jay replied: “They always used to say ‘Travel is the enemy of bigotry.'” He also mentioned how being in the Iranian Mustang Club has opened his eyes to a new culture. “When you talk to them, they’re just us. Same thing!” He went on to mention the value of individual car ownership. “People abuse things that they don’t own,” he said.

It’s clear that Leno, like yours truly, really values the way cars can bring people of different backgrounds together.”The most obscure automobile there’s a club for,” he said. “My favorite is the Tatra Club,” which he saw mentioned in a magazine, and which apparently had a regular holiday party. For its four members!

The interview/chat went by fast. Like, really fast. When I got the wrap-up signal, my heart sank a bit. I had barely asked any of the reader-submitted questions! Alas, I had only been alotted 20 minutes, and things had gotten a bit geekier than expected. Alas, it was still awesome to have chatted with Jay Leno.

The Interview Ended, And Then Things Got Even Cooler

But then Jay surprised me. Even though he had other interviews to do, he showed me around a bit. That Wills Sainte Claire that he’d mentioned with the overhead cam V8, bevel drive, and declutching fan? He just had to show me the state-of-the-art cast aluminum engine in that early 1920s machine:

Next, Jay hopped into his Stutz Bearcat because all of our talk about what gives a car soul led us to talk about intricate mechanical contraptions, like his watch; he wanted to show me how it was angled specifically for use in old-school British car racing.

Here’s Jay showing me how a race car driver would wear that watch while holding onto a steering wheel:

Jay also showed me an old Franklin air-cooled car, because why not? It definitely qualifies as a noble failure:

Then, after I’d told Jay Leno’s Garage’s executive producer (a big Autopian fan and all-around nice guy) during our initial walk-around tour that I’d never hand-cranked a car, he’s suggested I mention that to Jay. “He might let you start one. He likes doing that sort of thing.”

He was right. As soon as Jay heard I’d never crank started a car, he walked us over to his old Model T, marveled how he was able to get it started (via an electric starter) even though it had sat for many months, and then told me to head to the front of the car now that the engine had been primed to start.

I must admit, I wasn’t expecting the spring that you have to push against to be so stiff, so the handle kept coming out of the crankshaft. Eventually, after struggling, I pushed the handle in hard, and then cranked. Boom!

The four-cylinder flathead fired right up with barely any effort needed from me. It was maybe 45 degrees of rotation and the thing just cranked right up. It was amazing!

I said goodbye, and then left Jay Leno’s garage, only to realize later that I’d left my backpack there. Like a fool. I came by the following day to pick it up, and it was right where I’d left it:

When I went back to pick up my backpack, I flagged down an employee to see if he’d let me in. I told him I was a journalist and I’d left something, and he was kind enough to walk me to the Jeep you see above. Out of curiosity, on my way out I asked the gentleman what it was like working at Jay Leno’s Garage. The man, in somewhat broken English, replied that he’d been working there for quite a few years, and that he feels like he won a lottery in life. “Jay is an Angel,” were his exact words.

That’s just cool.