1918 Stutz Bearcat - Jay Leno's Garage

go girls pick it up come on girls pick it up let's go let's go what another episode of Jay Leno's Garage the car being featured today my 1918 Stutz Bearcat I think this is one of the sexiest cars of the other period right around right that by the end of World War 2 or the teens as they say cars just about a hundred years old and the styling I thought it was pretty cool it's one of the few cars where the rear fender is higher than the body and the body slopes down given a kind of a rakish look to it this would have been the equivalent to perhaps a Camaro or a Mustang back in the day it has a lot of really cool features that has the center throttle it has the drop floor it has an exhaust cutout it has an outside gearshift it has the hand brakes on the outside as well but we'll get into all of that in just a minute if you think you've seen this car before rather you have is one of the first cars we did when I started this website and it's a classic case of you know it's hard to restore a car perfectly the first time we've done this car three times not so much the cosmetics the cosmetics we got right the first time but just getting piston clearances and the transaxle Harry Stutz invented at least in America the transaxle and this is one of the cars that were the features of his cars for better balance having the transmission in the back but it always popped out of gear we had to go through the gears a couple of times you had to make new Pistons three separate times for this car there were just a lot of things that weren't right even where I got the car from up in Vermont there's a guy called a Kay Miller kind of a hermit kind of guy and he was a Stutz guy and kind of a character I guess you'd say he was a recluse he was 94 years old I don't think he had running water in the house I don't think he had electricity in the house and he fell off his roof at age 94 and died because he was working on the roof and went into the house and they dug up the floor he had eight hundred thousand dollars in gold bullion buried in the floor he was born before Social Security so there was no record of them even being on the tax rolls or ever existing so the most of money disappeared he was an interesting guy I believe he was the first guy to if the rumor is correct he flew a gyrocopter helicopter he wanted to show President Roosevelt landed on the White House lawn and was immediately arrested which occurs from that day forward thing instituted a flyover band over the White House yeah it's just so many stories about this guy anyway this car was sitting in his lean-to and his shed so he has a picture of it it was put in there in the 30s or early 40s and it stayed that way all the way up to the early 80s when I got the car consequently it needed every single thing but it was such a sexy car such a cool car I I just had to have it this and the mercer race about with the two hot sports cars or at least American sports cars of the early teens they used to say there's nothing nothing worser than a Mercer and Mercer P would say you got to be nuts to drive a Stutz they would throw rocks at each other and well much like Mustang your Camaro guys are today that's pretty much the way it is anyway as you can see the folding top goes under here the spare wheel is up here this was the first car with it Harry Stutz designed his own engine for he always used Wisconsin motors or somebody else's engines to build his cars because Harry Clayton Staats was born in 1876 he's not about 1931 of 11 children which is fairly common back in the day and you know as a whole group of these guys much like you had the dot-com guys in 90s - Bill Gates and the Paul Allen's and all those guys who just seemed to be natural geniuses with computers there was a whole bunch of guys who are just natural geniuses with mechanical things henry ford walter Chrysler Harry stud see for some reason this whole generation just seemed to percolate up and boom come out of nowhere guys with no formal educational at all most of them but they could look at something ago one ten-thousandth is what it needs and they would be exactly right so it's a it was an interesting period you know the internal combustion engine was the computer of the early 1900s you know anybody to work with engines was was almost destined always good with engines was destined to be if not a millionaire usually pretty wealthy let's take a look as you can see it just has one single door on this side you enter from the passenger side I've got a book here though it's called the car that made good in the day Stutz this was put out by the stats club it's fantastic history of Harry Stutz and all those cars and that slogan the car that made good in the day Harry Stutz when he built his car he didn't road test it he didn't take it to the track he finished the car and he said let's go race it in Indianapolis it was either the very first of the second Indianapolis and he entered the race and he came in 11th which is pretty good for a car that never been even tested on the road before so making lemonade out of lemons he came up the slope in the car that made good in the day meaning it proved itself against out not race cars from Europe and the best of America had to offer and his car was completely stocked passenger car and it came in 11th in Indianapolis and that's how we made his reputation he was one of those boom-or-bust guys he was really wealthy went broke made some money again went broke again you know eventually died at age 53 I think of a burst appendix if I'm not mistaken something like that but let's get back to the car as you can see no brakes in the front still a right-hand drive which a lot of American cars had Henry Ford is really the guy that fought for the left-hand drive and eventually everybody switched over because more than half of the cars sold in America will forward so it was one of those things like beta and VHS don't other one was better or worse than the other but the most popular one usually wins out and this was the first Stutz to have an engine design specifically for this car as I said earlier Harry Stutz used all used everybody else's motors with his components and then he wanted to build his own car with his own engine and let's take a look at what it looks like let's open it up on the intake side that's where most of the pretty stuff is okay here we go there it is right there this is a 16-valve engine it's a T head design you have dual camshafts operating 16 valves you adjust the valves here open those doors there Oh take that panel off easily three and three-eighths bore six inch stroke giving a displacement of about 361 cubic inches the cylinders are cast in a single block of what they call super fine grade grey iron crankshaft was nickel steel heat-treated all of that camshafts are made out of the same material bronze bearings the crankcase is an aluminum alloy the upper half has massive webbing to support the crankshaft virginity push rods are nickel steel valves a tungsten steel it holds about ten quarts and lubrication was force feed to the crankshaft bearings and an oral splash system was pretty effective this has got they this has got an oil gauge in it but it's pretty scary good when it gets warm it doesn't register any or pressure because it's all splash now a lot of people thought this engine was kind of old-fashioned when it was designed because the overhead valves especially on racing cars or high-performance cars that was really the way to go and hairy studs had to defend the defenders decision to have a 16-valve T head engine the reason he went with these 16 valves was the smaller size of the valves of the four valve and eliminated the possibility of warping and crystallizing from high speed and the wearing the cams and the valve mechanism was reduced also the valve area though was greater and that afforded a longer duration of maximum gas flow and all that kind of thing so that was his excuse and that's what they said in all the say sales catalogs now those of you their real Stutz guys might notice this ignition system has been upgraded but only a few years the normal system was in here was ok we put this from a later car onto this car just because it just made it it just ran a lot better you know ignition technology is moving pretty quickly and by the 30s which this is it just works better it looks period and it's it's fine but it just makes for a better running car this is your Stromberg carburetors notice it's glass you can see how much fuel is in there here's your intake these are up primer cups what you do here in cold weather you would open this you put a little gas in here which would put a little gasoline directly into the cylinder you'd close this and then when you cranked it it would fire off right away because the gas didn't has to pull through the updraft carburetor the reason they use updraft carburetors was because carburetor technology is still pretty primitive and the needle you know how the needle lets the fuel in and out well if you had a downdraft carburetor cover is up here the gas is coming down and and the gasoline the cover is sat overnight it could see past the needle get into the cylinders your cylinder we're filled with gas you turn the key and it can't compress and you literally hydraulic the cylinder and blow the block apart so way these worked was any residual gas would just fall on the ground not particularly environmentally correct but that's the way they did it back in the day it has electric start it has two spark plugs per cylinder normally this would have had a two bladed fan airplane type they called it this has four blade fan because it's California gets pretty hot you sit in traffic and none of those things existed when this car was built it's a complex engine and you know as I say we went through three sets of Pistons because everything expands at different rates and you you go down the road all those into the engine with soft C's meaning the piston would grow tightening the bore and then it would lock up so as it cools you could go again by that time the piston has scored the cylinder and you've got to hone it or possibly be bored all over again so we did that a total of three times we finally got it right and now it seems to be okay but that's why I always chuckle when I watch these shows where come on guys let's work all night and restore the car and the next morning the owner shows up okay oh it's painted no everything's done about it now I've had this car 20 years and I would say for the first 10 or 12 it was pretty frustrating just you think you got it and then something would happen again but now we finally got it where it's a good running dependable car and a really sexy car in a kind of cool car as well so where's what I think is the sexiest part of this car I mentioned this before notice how the fender is higher than the body I think that's really kind of cool your folding top fits under this cover here the spare tire drops into this area here kind of like an early continental kit this is a period lock that holds your tire in place yeah your gas tank is back here and your gas gauge is completely located here so whatever you want know how much gas you go just get out pull off the side of the road look at that go around the passenger side and get back in again you had one light here these are all your lubrication points for you you do all of that you had brakes on the rear only which was fine back in the day you know this car costs about twenty five hundred dollars new which doesn't sound like a lot today but a Model T was about two hundred sixty to three hundred dollars so that was quite a bit of money but you got a car that was twice as fast actually twice as fast as the Model T this is rated about 80 horsepower and it could go about 85 to 90 miles an hour Model T was ready to 22 horsepower I thinking that went about 240 miles an hour or something like that so this was quite a sporty car let's go over the dashboard a little bit just to give you some idea we have this beautiful wood steering wheel and you have your this advance and for your ignition and this is a hand throttle to raise or lower even to be used as a raise or lower the idle rather this could be used as a as a speed control to just set it and forget it I guess there you have the oil pressure gauge over there though you don't have you have oil pressure when you start out at about thirty pounds and then as the oil gets warm as I said it just throws it around it goes to zero which is scary so most people opted not to get the oil pressure gauge that your ammeter these your headlights and all your headlights side lights all that tail light this is a Magneto that's that's a battery that's Magneto this is an air pump the way this works is early cars like this did not have a mechanical fuel pump or electric fuel pump what you did was you loosen this you you pumped it up and so you got pressure on this gauge here about two pounds then you would lock it in and the air would force the gasoline through the car and they were pretty bulletproof you know there's no need for a mechanical fuel pump or electric fuel pump when you had that then you had your speedometer and trip ometer over there your windshield you'd loosen these and you could open the windshield like this completely if you just wanted the wind in your face which is kind of cool on a summers day and then you tighten it up again you had a spotlight here and then outside here you had well let me show you first of all on the floor first you have this which is kind of cool this is your exhaust cut out this wood right now what's going through the muffler when he got in the outskirts of town you want to open up will beat your press set down and you slide it over as I do I'll show you later and now you got a straight to exhaust which is loud and noisy and gives you a couple more horsepower you had the drop floor just like the Indianapolis racers hand you had a Center throttle like the Indianapolis racers hand that's your clutch and that's your brake this is a light for your spotlight here outside the car which is kind of cool which is a really racy feature back of the day you have the outside gear shift just like the old racecars from the period and you had your hand brake out here as well and your battery went in this box right here I think it's time to take this baby this is what the English were described as a cat's car you know if you a thought of a swinging single guy in 1918 this would be the car that I think women probably would have been attracted to really sporty you know kind of go to the football games in the raccoon coat the whole deal and when he got a town you got over the exhaust Hey [Music] [Music] automatic dog cut up imagine abruptly here I've opened the exhaust cutout it's a little bit noisier and maybe gives you one or two horsepower I don't know but [Music] stop spilling discards about 85 but that's pushing it 55 a good cruising speed in this car and you go anywhere and it's pretty nice I mean brakes they're somewhat marginal but you learn to adjust it comes full arrives okay and it's such a great-looking car from that period you know what cars that beard or pretty boxing square-looking where's this one has some real style this and the Mercer race about my two favorite cars from the team I give the race about the edge because they had a fourth feed box it was a bit more of a real racing car that is that before this windshield opens and closes if you want to get more air through here yeah Harry Staats was an interesting guy built some beautiful cars a very really just got not a big player died fairly young kind of a sad story but one of the American graves the real original grew up in Estonia Estonia Ohio I think that's how you say it on the shore married to the same woman don't know he didn't know when he had an affair that's right forget that whole thing forget what I said my moto meters right in front of me so I can see my temperature the Moto meter is that ample of the fits on top of the radiator that has the thermometer in it and the thermometer tells you what your temperature is and right now we're not even halfway up the scale so it's about 80 degrees today here in California and this thing is running nice and cool I run Evans School in these old motors he's non-pressurized one because there's no water in it Evans school is a life of the car coolant you put it in you never have to put any more in again unless you go if you have a leak of some kind but it boils the 370 so it's not gonna shoot out over you and a reasonably comfortable car as well as I said this is probably studs his most successful car and suddenly the car he's most remembered for but for an almost hundred year old car you can drive it like a regular car and just cruise around on a summer night in California go along the Pacific Coast Highway it's not really a freeway car you don't want to be on the 405 trying to keep up with 80 90 mile an hour traffic but a nice two lane road like this point doesn't get any better this bridge I'm going over if you ever saw the movie Chinatown with Jack Nicholson this is the bridge where a lot of the action took place kind of cool I only mention it because this car fits right in with that period keyd go girls pick it up come on girls pick it up let's go let's go although these guys aren't fast by modern standards just this year mechanical nacelle to make some fun to drive there's no electrics in this car there's at the lights of the battery you know I mean the brakes of mechanical the here's just McGarry mechanical on it is it just kind of fun and that is all cut out you know there are a lot of modern cars that have fun that have fun at 45 miles an hour that's Mike which makes key so much fun you know this car is geared to be between 45 and 60 so consequently everything is running optimally at that rpm you know these brakes you don't want to slam them on at 70 because nothing will happen so 45 it cruise along wind in your face beautiful California day you can even open this windshield if you want let's open that exhaust cut out again I hope this third time's a charm thing we did here as I said I had in this car 20 years I got terribly discouraged by it because it was everything was just off you know that transaction wouldn't shift right the engine kept seizing but you take your time like I said before you it's the kind of project you work on it the engine seized you put it away for six months you work on something else you come back and you give it a shot so like I say I always smile when I see these shows where people restore a car over weekend cuz they're up all night it doesn't really work that way but it's turned out to be just a wonderful car just a great touring car car to go on a drive with it's sporty it's sexy it really is of the era you know that error in the late teens the beginning of the roaring 20s this is what all the cool guys had so it's it's fun to share a piece of this history with you and the reason I haven't shut it off is I want to go put another 50 or hundred miles on it so I'll see you guys later bye bye [Music] Oh

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 542,408

Rating: 4.9519629 out of 5

Keywords: bear, cat, stutz, jay, leno, garage, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, compares cars, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, car gear, McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, Camaro Z28, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, episode, motorcycle, ford, corvette, tour, dodge, lexus

Id: tzr43iLxmmw

Length: 24min 30sec (1470 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 24 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/iamnotanaxmurderer]

Actually, Burns had the 1936 model.

Boy, I really hope someone got fired for that blunder.

[u/bathroomstalin]

"The equivalent to a Camaro or a Mustang back in the day"

Burns always been straight OG