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Interview: Me and my motors: Jay Leno
Boy, can he talk cars ...
Leno is to cars what Imelda Marcos was to shoes. The front man for The Tonight Show, watched nightly by 6m Americans and broadcast on Sky in the UK, rides or drives a different machine every day. But so enormous is his collection that he only gets to use the same car or bike three times a year.
“I’d live here if I could,” he says, as we walk through the third of the three warehouses where he keeps his stash in Los Angeles.
I ooh and ah like a kid at a fireworks display. At every turn, every view is filled with magical machinery, totalling around 80 cars and 80 bikes. To the left there is a McLaren F1, to the right Dean Martin’s Lamborghini Miura, with another Miura and a Lamborghini Countach nestling among a mouthwatering array that includes Bugattis, 8 litre Bentleys, a Jaguar E-type, two Jaguar XK120s and, at £1m each, five Duesenbergs, arguably the most over-the-top car in the history of American motoring.
We climb aboard one of this treasured quintet to become cocooned in the sort of luxury normally reserved for the Hôtel de Paris in Monaco. The dashboard is an art deco masterpiece. There is even an altimeter, pandering to the 1920s obsession with aeroplanes. But the overriding sensation is the smell of pre-war money.
“All Duesenbergs were built in 1929 but when the depression hit it took 10 years to sell them,” explains Leno who, despite being a multi-millionaire, wears only a tatty denim shirt and jeans. “This is America’s answer to the 8 litre Bentley. They were the fastest American cars until the 1950s.”
The mix of workwear and million-pound car is surreal but typifies Leno’s life. Now 53, he hails from a middle-class Boston suburb. His father was Italian, an insurance salesman; his mother Catherine was born in Scotland. It is no coincidence then that he delights in British and Italian machinery.
“I love the way the English use their old cars. I went to Rolls-Royce at Crewe once and saw where the bomb went through the roof and where Mrs Smithins polished the dashboards.
“I love English cars. Their idiosyncrasies make me laugh. It’s like having a back door on your house that doesn’t quite fit right. You have to learn how to shut the door — or how to fire it up.
“Americans are different. They don’t like cars, they like car crashes. Just look at the TV: there are shows on car chases and monster truck racing, but not just cars.”
One of Leno’s first jobs was for Rolls-Royce. By night he was trying to break into comedy but by day he was a delivery driver at a dealership near New York. That combination nearly killed his career and his weakness for cars.
“Once I had to deliver a Corniche convertible. I had to collect $30,000 from the guy buying it. But on the way back I stopped at a comedy club in Times Square. They let me do a set and afterwards I left to drive home. Two hours out I remembered I had left the paper bag with the $30,000 in it on the piano.
“That was one of the longest two hours of my life. I got back to the club at two or three in the morning and a girl was singing on stage. I jumped right up there, saw that the bag was still on the piano, grabbed it and apologised, saying that I had forgotten my lunch.”
To make it big as a comedian, Leno had to head west. The first car he bought in LA was a 1955 Buick that now sits in a pile of bits in the middle of his workshop in the throes of restoration.
“It’s not exactly original. It’s now got Corvette underpinnings and, oh yes, this is the motor for it — it’s 630 horse,” he beams. Mind you, Leno beams at almost every car he has.
His big break came a decade ago when he took over from Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. The format is one that has been copied the world over and it earns him a reported £10m a year.
Leno does not get to choose the guests on his show; he has a say but it is mostly down to his producers. “These rap bands come on and, to be honest, I’ve got no idea who they are.” If he could pick his interviewees, the talk show would become a car show. “I’d love to have Gordon Murray on to talk about his cars like the McLaren F1.
“Most stars have no idea about cars, though,” says Leno, who shares a mechanic with his friend and fellow enthusiast, John Travolta. “I had one say to me after the show, ‘You’re into cars, what should I buy?’ I said, ‘The new Ferrari’s hot.’ ‘Oh everyone’s got a Ferrari,’ he said. I said, ‘Never say that! Not everyone has a Ferrari. Never say that, you’ll get shot.
Remember Marie Antoinette and let them eat cake!’” Barely a week goes by without Leno adding to his collection of cars and bikes. “Let me see, I’ve just built a dragster with a Patton tank engine and, oh yeah, I’m going to be the first guy in America to take delivery of the new Mercedes SLR.” He beams once more.
ON HIS CD CHANGER
It's a pretty eclectic selection. Right now I'm listening to The Spoken Word - Poets, historic recordings from the British Library sound archive. It's a series of readings of the best British poetry
I'm also listening to Jerry Lee Lewis's Greatest Hits and Little Richard's Greatest Hits and anything by Jamiroquai - I have to help him to pay for that Ferrari Enzo he's just bought!