The Celebrity Collector: Jay Leno

Jay Leno’s work ethic and The Tonight Show

Fortune magazine reported that Jay Leno had “generated close to $1 billion in profits for NBC” after he took over from Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show in 1992, and the magazine called him TV’s “MVP, its Most Valuable Performer.” The figure gave him a nickname that stuck: NBC’s billion dollar man.

The success did not come quickly. Before his first appearance on The Tonight Show in 1977, Leno was working about 300 stand-up gigs a year. His reasoning was simple. Other comedians took vacations, and when they did, he wanted to be the one available to fill in.

That habit carried over into his years as the leading late-night host. At the time of the 2004 interview, his typical day began at 7:30 a.m. with more than an hour of exercise with trainers. Then came staff meetings and a 5 p.m. taping, followed by an evening out. Back home he worked on jokes until the early hours, and he got by on four or five hours of sleep a night.

A schedule like that called for a way to unwind, and for Leno it was machinery. He collected cars and motorcycles, and although the numbers moved up and down as vehicles came and went, in 2004 the collection stood at somewhere around 80 cars and 80 motorcycles. He also owned a fire truck.

How many cars did Jay Leno have in 2004?

Asked about the size of his fleet, Leno had a one-liner ready: “It is cheaper to have 35 cars and one woman than one car and 35 women.”

The vehicles filled three warehouses, each about the size of a football field. Their walls and ceilings were hung with period posters and billboards for cars, oil companies and races. Four employees looked after the cars and bikes full time.

The multi-million-dollar collection ran across nearly the whole history of the automobile. It included several Stanley Steamers from the early 1900s, a 1909 Baker Electric, a 1913 Mercer and a two-cylinder 1916 Auto Car. From the classic era there were Duesenbergs, a 1932 Packard Twin Six 12-cylinder coupe and several Bentleys. Later decades were covered by Jaguars, a 1955 Buick Roadmaster coupe, American muscle cars from the 1950s and 1960s and a 427 Cobra. Leno also had a chain-driven, two-cylinder Morgan, Lamborghinis, Bugattis and a 200-mph McLaren F1.

His first vehicle was far humbler: a 1934 Ford pickup.

The range says something about how Leno collected. Steam and electric cars such as the Stanley and the Baker came from the years when nobody yet knew whether gasoline would win. Luxury makes such as Packard and Duesenberg came later, and the muscle cars and the McLaren brought the story up to date.

The McLaren F1, the Duesenbergs and the Y2K turbine bike

In 2004 the McLaren was valued at more than $1 million. Its 627-horsepower engine took it from zero to 60 mph in 3.4 seconds, and it had been called the world’s fastest production car.

Some of the Duesenbergs had an even more striking story in numbers. Cars that originally sold for $20,000 to $25,000 were valued at about $1 million each at the time of the interview.

Leno’s other high-speed machine had two wheels. The Y2K Turbine Superbike was powered by a 320-horsepower turbine engine designed for a 10,000-pound Bell helicopter, and its top speed was around 260 mph. Leno bought the second one on the market, which listed at $150,000 at the time. The bike carried a tail-mounted camera feeding a color monitor on the dash, so the rider could watch the reactions of the drivers he had just passed.

Motorcycles made up half the collection by count, which put Leno in company with other celebrity riders such as Billy Gray, who collected racing motorcycles.

Jay Leno’s 1941 American-LaFrance fire truck

The fire truck cost Leno nothing. The 1941 American-LaFrance, with a 754-cubic-inch V-12 engine, was first owned by Warner Bros. When the studio no longer needed it, it donated the truck to the City of Burbank, and the engine then sat in the sun at the end of the city airport’s runway for 20 years.

Eventually Burbank’s fire chief offered it to Leno for free. By then the tires were flat, the upholstery and gauges were cracked and the paint had faded, and the truck had to be towed away. Leno and his team had it running again after 10 days of hard work, and they drove it straight to the Burbank Fire Department.

The truck became one of the best-known pieces in the collection. Leno gave Tom Cruise a ride in it, and he was seen pulling up to a McDonald’s drive-through in it, or in one of his vintage cars, to order a Big Mac. He also drove one car from the collection to work every day.

Pace cars, Hot Wheels and car-world honors

Leno’s reputation as a car man brought him invitations few collectors get. He served as the official pace car driver for both the Daytona 500 and the Indianapolis 500, and he was the first person to drive the official pace car at all the major NASCAR races. (For the 88th Indianapolis 500, held on May 30, 2004, the honor went to Morgan Freeman.)

The collection was famous enough that Mattel produced a line of Hot Wheels cars named after it, “The Jay Leno Collection.” The series included his Lamborghini Miura, Shelby Cobra, Shelby Mustang and Jaguar E-type, and the individual die-cast cars sold for $10 to $15 each in 2004.

Leno shared the hobby with plenty of famous names. Other celebrity car collectors and classic car owners included Gary Cooper, Elton John, Harrison Ford, Eminem, Hulk Hogan, Nicolas Cage, Adam Sandler, Ken Griffey Jr. and Jerry Seinfeld. Seinfeld favored Porsches from the 1960s and was reported to have spent $1.4 million on a 20-car garage and gallery in Manhattan, with about 47 cars in all. Its centerpiece was a $700,000 Porsche 959 that could not legally be driven on the street: only 200 were built, and Porsche would not supply four for emissions and crash testing.

From a Ford dealership in Andover to the Walk of Fame

James Douglas Muir Leno was born on April 28, 1950, in New Rochelle, New York. His father, Angelo, sold insurance, and his mother, Cathryn, ran the home. He was a prankster in elementary school, and his fifth-grade teacher wrote on a report card that “if Jay spent as much time studying as he does trying to be a comedian, he’d be a big star.”

Leno’s first job, in 1967, was at a Ford dealership in Andover, Massachusetts, where he detailed cars and did odometer recalibrations.

After his 1977 debut as a guest on The Tonight Show, he was invited back often. He began guest hosting in 1987 and took the desk permanently in 1992, following Jack Paar, Steve Allen and Johnny Carson. May 2004 marked his 12th anniversary in the job. His run earned him a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Away from the studio, he performed for U.S. troops in Bosnia and Italy and was known for waving at people who greeted him on the streets of Burbank. He voiced the Crimson Chin on the cartoon The Fairly OddParents, appeared in the 1994 film The Flintstones and made commercials for Doritos and Tostitos.

Jay Leno’s view of owning old cars

Leno did not think of himself as the final owner of anything in the warehouses. In his view he didn’t really own the cars; he was getting them ready for the next caretaker. New cars would keep arriving and some would be sold.

It is a view many serious collectors share, from people restoring vintage aircraft like Cliff Robertson to the dealers and pickers who move objects from one owner to the next, as in the story of Mike Wolfe of American Pickers. A restored 1909 electric car or a revived 1941 fire engine will outlast any single owner, and Leno treated his role as keeping them running in the meantime.