All of Jay Leno's Barn Finds: How He Found Them & Untold Stories | Barn Find Hunter

look Nigel put a bit of Chrome on it put some fins on it this to me was the original Shelby Cobra the nice thing is when if you going you can do [Music] this you know it's always a good day in the Cotter household when my phone rings and I look oh it's Jay Leno hey Jay Tom you'll never guess what I just found and it's happened over and over and over again J thanks for inviting us here thanks thanks that shows you the age we living now I'm right here but he still has to communicate through the phone did you see that I mean he's like a 12-year-old now well you told me what it was I thought this would be an interesting one because this is not technically a barn fine this is a car that was in a shipping crate in the desert well I remember when you told me you found it so so have you done anything with it or you just brought it right here the engine was not in it um this is a car it's been a race car its whole life at least since 1959 or 60 Junior's house of color painted the candy apple red uh Tony Nancy did the interior it was you know interesting car it's I said to the guy you have the engine he goes well yeah yeah he said I had it rebuilt in Germany and I went oh yeah right okay but I saw the Kate the the crate rather it was German we brought it here we took it out of the crate there was assembly Lube over everything we put it on my engine Dyno it made a little over 200 horsepower 210 220 something like that and it was rebuilt in Germany and you didn't have to do anything not really I mean we checked everything yeah what had happened was you have a a lamb skin kind of diaphragm in the fuel system and running on the dyno it ran fine but when he got up to revs it got porous or had paracity anyway it would lean out we realized if we hadn't had that Dino I probably would have damaged the engine running it too lean you know so okay we fix that modern replacement put the engine did the transmission did the brakes did everything the nice thing is when there you goings you can do this you know and there's no fitted luggage it's just fun to drive as an old car uh what we what year is it it is a 55 you see the metal we just put shellac clear coat over all the metal so it wouldn't deteri anymore yeah but if you had bought this car in 1959 to 61 this is probably what it would looked like you probably would have paid $1,500 or $18 $0000 for it cuz it's only a few years old m i mean I worked for Mercedes dealer in the late 60s and we bought one for $5,000 sold it for $7500 and my boss thought oh my God cuz 2500 was a lot of money I was like $25,000 today right so that's what's kind of fun about it you can use it for its intended purpose just to drive and have fun I mean it would probably cost a half a million to strip it go through the chassis chess check all the welds make sure everything is exactly but it wouldn't drive any better or stop any better and then you couldn't have the fun with it you couldn't sit up well it's fun just to drive it and you know when you go to car shows kids want to sit in hey you got away from me you don't have to do that it's just an old car you know so it wears its age well I think so oh I think so yeah so you're leaving it the way it is I think it's the most valuable the way it is think so I mean you could paint it and then somebody say well I don't like that color so you know that's another 40 Grand to redu you know so it's exactly what it is and we have pictures of it at Riverside and I don't know so Junior's house of color is a is a well-known painter in this area in that Los Angeles area and well certainly in the 60s and did all the hot rods Tony now he gets 100 Grand a car to paint them something like that you know Tony Nancy was a a huge hot Roder who had an upholstery shop too and how' you hear about this I'm always curious about little birdie told you do you remember when you when people know you know about things they tell you things they know you know so most people I find just want their car to go to a good home I mean an awful lot of guys that didn't have children the wife has passed away and this is their last possession and you know nobody wants to sell it and then see it on Bring a trailer for three times the money and then they feel stupid you know so what I usually do I usually put pictures of the owners on the wall and uh you know get a lot of people come by to see their grandpa's car that nice so I remember two phone calls you made to me about two different duesenbergs one in Burbank and one in New York City right right right are they here they are here let's take a look yeah that's kind of interesting Fiat lady bought that new in 59 mhm she put it in her living room in' 62 and it just sat there till I pulled it out in 2005 or 6 original paint original interior only had 5,000 Mi when I got it now it has about 9,000 mies holy so you've driven it oh I drive it it's a wonderful you know this is if you were an Italian businessman like a middle manager with a wife and two kids oh this the car fantastic it' be like a a fair lane or a low model galaxy Italian version you know four-speed on the column MH you know it it it it kind of dances down the road it's a wonderful driving car very light yeah really terrific 5,000 miles yeah yeah she had a party and some put a Coke can on the hood she was very sorry about that oh man so people want to find good homes for their cars and and this is the home for many people well I do hear from an awful lot of people like that M oh oh the ultimate barnfire forgot about that right over here this is the one interesting thing not one one the interesting thing about living in California we're here at the Burbank Airport and locked Martin was right across the way where they developed a lot of planes so you had a lot of Engineers and Technical people people lived in this area Emilia airharts hanger is just quarter mile down the road from here she lived here a lot of these kind of people in fact when you drive around here you see little houses with enormous garages behind the houses it's just airplane people it's car people this guy bought this Jaguar brand new in ' 63 put in his garage in ' 67 or 68 just started drinking and pretty much drank himself to death we died about four years ago now and this is buried under tons and when I say tons not like I mean literally 2,000 lb 4,000 lb worth of there was a water heater on top of it a broken console television a washing machine everything was crammed this jail and the cops told me told the hey Jay Len is down the street so I heard from them and they said our uncle had this car he had some kind of English car we don't know what it is cuz just buried under everything okay less than a mile from here we went over there we started moving stuff out of the way this is what it was it's got 177,000 miles it's got the original exhaust system original top which has never even been down yet so I'm going to put it down and the back window holy back window is original plastic isn't that funny man they you they usually turn foggy yeah and and original bumpers original I mean the the Chrome look nice this is what's nice about living in a desert you know yeah yeah so it's it's pretty cool here's something interesting about these cars you know most people when they do a Jag they do the wires and everything but they forget about this finic piece of material here okay that's all original everything is all original original toolkit original Jack look at the interior look how nice faul I've never seen a ja interior like that color I know but this this was called um this is some kind of go opalescent sand was the name of this color everything works the Clock Works 17,36 miles yeah the only thing I did to it I was a little L of wire wheels being so he put just a little wider wheel on it so the tire has a bit more of a footprint but I still have the original Wheels that's fabulous how long do you have it well I've had it about four years now mhm just just so he oil change sticker you well here's what's interesting see these are the chalk marks from the factory man now normally if you lived in Massachusetts or even Texas where it rains and what all that would have washed off but you're in a desert climate so all of that stay so it's pretty nice so what did you have to do the engine to make it nothing didn't no I cleaned it took it apart cleaned it pulled the rear end out flushed everything new seals that's about it didn't replace the Rope seal in the back of the trans is still good doesn't leak the only thing our place was this it was just had rust cuz it was parked wet you know and that was fil so we just changed that tank and I still have the original tank but I'm afraid it's going to become porous but porous but yeah but and it's it's the right one you want it's a 63 series one so it have whatever 3.8 I guess 3.8 yeah which a lot of people think is a much sweeter engine than the 4.2 I don't know how many times a day or a week Jay gives tours to people but he's so accommodating to strangers or industry people car company Executives uh and and even though he's explained this car and that car and that car and that car how many times over the course of weeks days months years decades every time he explains it to somebody he's like it's like the first time he's talking he's excited about it like when he showed us when this Hood was up the the crayon marks that were put on at the factory where that if it were in another state like uh Rhode Island or New England where the salt would have eaten up those crayon marks but because this is an LA car a desert environment it's still there he explained that to me like it was like I was the first person he was telling it to he he loves this stuff and I'm so happy that we have someone like him to be kind of our our leader our guide in the old car world because they could no not be anybody better than him and this was a barn find here was the damler well they called damler Dart in England they couldn't call it the dart here cuz Dodge Dodge had the dart it's fiberglass it sat in the guy's backyard for years just sat there and CA being fiberglass it didn't run rust but the fun thing about this is this has an engine designed by Edward Turner who did the Triumph Bonville motorcycle and the cool thing about it is it's a 2.5 L Hemi it came with a couple of sxes on it we just put the two barel Weber on it uh just put a Mitsubishi alternator on it because it weighs like 5 lbs less than the giant thing that was on there before are these is that aluminum head aluminum heads yeah yeah wow but really fast this to me was the original Shelby Cobra it was in fact when the London Police wanted to catch motorcyclist they bought I think 30 of these to catch the the fast motorcycles you know and you did a groundup restoration on this ground up restoration put a five-speed in it cleaned up the motor a little bit uh but yeah but other than that it's completely pretty much completely you see this once in a while but you're never seen where the hard top it was V of the ugliest car at the auto show it doesn't look bad what it it has that English it was built for the American look Nigel put a bit of Chrome on it put them fins on it put big fin put a big grill America's like a big grill like a Buick you know so it just has all these weird sort of what do you think Americans are like America's not a big grill mate big on you know like a V8 got Hemi in it you know and and it was but the trouble was uh Jaguar had just bought damler and jaguar did not want this beating their XK cuz it actually had more horsepower and with was faster and a V8 and smoother so they they they stopped the sports car but they kept the engine they put it in the damler sedan the small Jaguar this you either got the big six or you get the 2.5 L V8 is that when the name jaguar and damler became Associated yeah yeah Jaguar bought damler and just absorbed the company yeah yeah well that's a sweetheart if you like these videos you really should check out the haggy driver Club you get 24/7 roadside assistants with FL bed Towing subscription to an award-winning magazine and more sign up today the link is in the description below here over here is a really unusual barn find this is my Shotwell this is built by a 17-year-old kid in 1931 oh God what were you do in your 17 well that's what I mean that's what people did before Netflix you know they would build stuff you know and he wanted a car and his dad said we can't if you want a car you going have to build it so he and his dad went to a junkyard got some model a Model T Parts some metal got a motorcycle engine from an Indian 4 put it in the back here it's a three-wheeler as you can see and it's got these little wheels here to keep it so if you get a flat tire you don't tip over this is brilliant well he built this in Minnesota he and his brother went Minnesota to Alaska to uh San Diego and then back to Minnesota and he was a big tall guy here he is here Robert Schuster was his name I never met him I spoke to him he was like 90 years old they were taking taking him to an old folks home and he was so afraid that motorcycle guys would come in the backyard steal the engine and junk the car he said I'll give it to you if you promise to fix it and that's it when you got it yeah that that's it when we got a little rough a little rough no well it was rougher than this this is he's still a fairly young man there so it was pretty rough when we got it but then I had that uh actress uh I think Michelle will you know Michelle Williams the actress Academy Award had on The Tonight Show she said hey you got my grandpa's C I go Grandpa B oh yeah that funny yeah that's crazy yeah and I mean it runs pretty good that's a so I mean they must have got to a junkyard and bought a grill cuz this you can't make something like that I don't know yeah he might have made why couldn't you make it I is it metal yeah yeah wow I mean you know we make bodies here so we you do metal shaping wow and it's it's a lost art they knew more back then than they do now this is a barn find out of Indiana the Auburn no kidding very F car this would have been the equivalent of a GTO it's a V12 engine with a two-speed rear end lightweight body de engine developed by Augie dusenberg overhead valves quite fast for 1932 it didn't have the build quality of a Duesenberg but it wasn't meant to compete with you this was $999 32 you know but it was a gas seater a V12 and a depression that was a hard sell what a beautiful color combination yeah it's kind of nice wow so this this is the famous doozy yeah this is the 19 this is the last car built by the dusenberg brothers they were working on this car when eel cord walked in and said guys I'm buying you out finish that car I want you to build the ultimate car and they went to work on the model j this is called a model X it's not the same engine as a Model A it's similar single overhead cam but a lot of different a lot of improvements the guy I got it from bought it uh it's a 1927 model he he bought it in 46 I believe drove it out from Chicago put it in his garage there was some kind of earthquake in the garage settled and the door couldn't open so it stayed shut pretty much to 2005 wasn't it like here somewhere yeah 2 miles from here right around the corner there was always talk this old guy had a dusenberg in his uh garage he's like one of these real suspicious guys you yeah yeah so I would drive down the street in in the Stanley Steamers and blow the whistling way you then you go down in another kind of old car so I I got to be friendly with it very his daughter called me and said grandpa said if you want to buy what's in the garage imagine this the granddaughter grew up in the house had never been in the garage that's how secretive he was and in the garage he had a bits dusenberg engine and a packer body and he had this and when I got this it was filled with newspapers with headlines you know Japanese attack again you know this kind of stuff and jeez and it it was a Burbank newspaper and I'm looking at the paper and there was a strip club in Burbank back in the 40s which with with the Blom bombshell it was just kind of interesting through little history of the area but he never actually got it running uh with the help of Randy emo who was the premier D dusenberg expert it was too nice to restore I mean all the metal is strong so you cleaned it up just cleaned it up did the engine did the transmission did the brakes and it runs and drives fine and it's it's sort of a gangster looking car it's a very low roof M although it seems high by modern standards you realize they were usually much taller usually taller than you are yeah so but here we can I'll show you the motor if you want to see were they always bright green the motors uh apple green was the color yeah no this was gray as you can see you go see single overhead cam yep autovac everything is as it was it was expensive this is had you notice the wood trim is kind of expensive looking and all see the veneers and all this and ornate handles it's a nice driver well you know it it's fact that it drives it all I think is pretty cool is what's what's neat about it and then so the dezenberg from New York City is that here somewhere yes it is right down there that's that's the first car you called me about that you had found and the and the and you told me it's in a parking garage in Manhattan but you can't get it out because the elevator a new elevator was put in and the car is too big to get out of it I said crap you can't get it out so then you called me 5 years later says I got that dusenberg oh right right and I said how'd you get it down the elevator he said that was just a a BS story he said nobody to go and buy it right right well this one has a story too this one this is an all original car this learon barrel side this was bought by a kid who was 17 years old in 1929 his grandfather left him $177,000 and he and the grandfather went down and bought this duberg for $117,000 they drove it home and the son the son of the grandfather the father of the kid Furious that the grandfather squandered this money cashed their stock in to buy this stupid car threw them both out of the house well 2 months later the stock market crashed and the stock was worthless so William Ashton that was the name he had the car so he had the car for about 20 years and he sold it to a gentleman who was one of the first GIS into Berlin in 60 these guys went into the German banks and raided the German safe deposit boxes they got a bunch of diamonds all kinds of stuff and they hid their booty in the chassis of a German motorcycle mola the mola yeah welded up the mola left it in Germany after the they went back to Germany oh we bought a motorcycle they imported it cut the frame open took the diamonds bought this Stenberg from Ashton bought a huge estate in Connecticut lived like a king about a year later got despondent over a woman drove this into the barn shut the door let the engine run died in the car right here yeah now his father his brother was so upset by this he would never sell the car to anybody that knew the story you know hey I'm a dber collector I know your brother killed himself no not for sale not for sale so I'm in a motorcycle show Once I'm talking to the brother about motorcycles and he got into old cars and oh I like dusenberg oh you do yeah we talked a little bit you know he was amazed that I knew a lot not amazed but he was interested I knew a lot about Dober so I I I never knew the story of the brother so I I I that's how I got it cuz he wouldn't sell it to anybody that knew the story cuz I met collectors that oh they wanted to buy this car cuz it's original engine middle everything's original it's only got less than 50,000 miles on it you know so and it runs fabulous so I mean it had it needed everything original color combination I believe so wow I think so you did a frame off on this yeah again there were no you could get any color you wanted with dusenberg so but this is one of the few cars you can drive like a modern car 80 on the freeway is no problem I I put 354 gears in them I got rid of the 4 56s because it was the idea in those days was you just put it in third gear and leave it there come to a stop light the engines was open you could pull away in it's like having an automatic transmission well the car you were talking about I had already heard a rumor there was a dusenberg in a parking garage in New York City it's one of those rumors you hear about like you know the Corvette the guy guy died I okay so I actually went to the police station when I was a kid I heard you have a Corvette that a guy died in and it stinks too bed and a no we got rid of that one oh oh that's funny that's funny well that's what that's what that's kind of what this was so I'm in New York with my wife and she wants to go shopping I said where you go shopping I so I started in the village and I walked east to west I hit every parking garage in New York I got to West 57 Street looking for that car just any old cars here yeah well dusenberg and Rolls-Royce well and there it was it've been parked in 1931 it's the last original owner car to be sold Herbert Hoover used this when he visited New York here's the story oh look at that L's last original unrestored dusenberg there you go right there that's what it looked like when I got it now if I'm not mistaken this was in one of my books yeah and I wrote the story and you got sued over it yeah I did what happened was was bought by the people who founded Macy's they owed fees on it so I told the guy who owned the parking garage listen let me know when it comes up for sale cuz I don't want to get in the middle of you okay he said we're accepting bids on it okay so I bid 180 which seems ridiculous now but at the time it was a lot of money nobody wanted Town Cars everybody wanted okay so mine was the highest bid so I got it I got it and I restored it you know took it to Pebble and all that and then oh I got sued you tried you tricked my grandfather I never met the grandfather and you know just all so I let the court settle the court settle no you you you did the car and after I won with it at peble Beach and Award with it they said I ruined the car by they sent a pra I ruined the car by leaving it not in the original condition but see it had been parked under a hole in the roof and the hole in the roof had eaten through a fender and eaten through the r i mean it needed a lot of metal I me it's not really an attractive car we redid it uh it was you look you see it was done in what they call early Bordello as you can see just just look at this oh yeah holy Ma I mean it's kind of lipstick on a pig kind of thing you know I mean it's an enormously heavy car m i when you go around the corner whoa I mean you just feel the weight of it but so this you got this from the original owner although he didn't know about it well I bought I bought it from the garage who got no he wasn't deceased at the time and this one here was an interesting one too I think this is in your book too isn't it I don't think so this one this was the tow truck this had a rig in the back of it but we managed to to find the original plans and put it back the way it was this is the most expensive dusenberg ever built this is the Walker Coupe this is built for Josiah Lily Eli Lily some the pharmaceutical magnet he didn't drive but he had a shell s but so you're sitting like this with a sh in a coupe and plus it's the middle of depression and people throw rocks I'm look every Rich bastard you throw I mean yeah I mean you know if you look at it it's just built the over poor people that was the idea you just go out and you run over poor people with it you know and then that's basically what it was it's an odd design the headlights I mean what year is this it's aerodynamic when you realize every dezenberg was built in 1928 every single one okay they didn't they didn't sell them by the year it just took 10 years to sell them because they were so expensive a Model T was $260 and this was $27,000 it would be like buying buying a Bugatti Chiron in the middle of the depression you know so that's pretty much where you were man to there if when you look at when you realize these are all basically the same year but this just looks like some Cruella Deville car you know what other cars you can think of that you've got like in rough oh this was a bonf well sure this one a r never heard of it see this has a dusenberg walking beam engine you see this engine right here that's a display engine the way the walking beam works is the cam is low in the block the cam is down here you have overhead valves this is the precursor to the uh twin cam cars duam built a 100 of these racing engines in the early teens every engine not one came in worse than fourth place they won every race because it nobody had real overhead overhead cam came later and then it it kind of started to beat the but these were cast iron they were bulletproof there's no cylinder head you can't blow a head gasket you can't do anything so they lasted forever so they sold these engines to people who would put them in cars uh Riv was one of them and renier and a whole bunch of companies but the guy that built these it was kind of a scam he started the company with dusenberg racing engine and somebody else's four-speed transmission and aluminum case and and the idea was like the movie Producers where you sell a bunch of stock then you declare bankruptcy and you keep the money that's what he did but it was a pretty good car wow so he fled and then he mysteriously died and was murdered in hotel room and then so there there not not a whole lot of Riv around but this thing is really fast I mean this would be the equivalent of whatever buying a Corvette or something nowadays back in the I mean it was fast it had a four-speed box uh had this over overhead valve engine it was really pretty cool so this is a water pump that's connected to the generator connected to the Dynamo yeah yeah and that pretty and it's all is it driven off of this belt no I gu okay that that is cool but let's take a look at the cing app so you did a nice job I got to say that this is time to give you a free plug what's that about Leno's Garage tell me about that hey if you'd like to know more about Jay lon's garage we're on YouTube it's called Jay L's garage we have over 1100 videos it's hard to believe we got that many but everything from conings eggs to wankle engines to AA cars to Porsches to Ferraris so check it out I think you'll like it we made these 15-in reproduction Wheels I real this had 16s of originally with a little thinner Tire which I should have kept but I was too lary of magnesium Wheels being so old you know Gordon Mary hated Magnesium Wheel he's a pretty good engineer I mean people say oh no no problem but I don't know so anyway that's what we did but other than that it's a 331 Hemi this is what it came with a Briggs counting hem was he and his wife were the richest couple in America when they got married he was a sportsman he never had a job uh he he was uh Swift me packing I think uh Proctor and Gamble Proctor and Gamble and she was Standard Oil Standard Oil right so they were hugely wealthy and he wanted to win lamal with an American car with an American driver so he built these in West Palm Beach Florida as you can imagine uh he got the bodies from uh fali fali that's right fali fali did it it's a basically a Ferrari body it's just 10% bigger like Americans are 10% bigger than Italians that's kind of the way it was and they all had two-speed Chrysler transmission which was horrible so we other thing is we put a 5-speed trimic in here wonderful driving car I mean and the greatest dashboard if you need your glasses to see this dashboard you should not be driving just I mean big giant lettuce yeah take a look so like yeah it's like a Ferrari dashboard yeah yeah yeah cuz Ferrari was not to far we know today they were a company that needed money and anybody would buy a body hey you're more than welcome to it he you did a wonderful job with this and this is the original combination with three tone most cunninghams were three tones yeah yeah but expensive this would about 15 grand and 52 price of three Cadillacs price of three Cadillacs my my parents paid 19,000 for their house in 59 so I know give you some idea so you the engine still the original 331 Hemi the engine came with it when it left the factory it had an engine the engine was replaced within like a year or two and this is it's it's the engine that's been in it yeah yep yep yep terrific car so the the way it worked is the the chassis is a Racing type chassis that Cunningham built in Florida they put the Hemi engine in it usually Mercury suspension transmission rear end and then they took that chassis and brought it up to New York put on a boat and took it to T in Italy where venali built these bodies of aluminum right and you know if you look at the Ferrari 212 of the same year it's designed by the same guy MC Giovanni motti right it's like the Ferrari is like Jay said 10% smaller than this because the Ferrari had a little 12 cylinder and this has a huge V8 yeah I mean the Ferrar was 2.5 L yeah and and when I was a kid I didn't understand what that meant but you realized that's really tiny tiny yeah it's like you know you like golf tees on the valves you know and I think that's about it oh I guess this would qualify as a a packer built Merlin engine that we found we s up to our buddies up at uh V12 and toache toache they do aircraft engines we had it rebuilt it's not air worthy but it's Road worthy I mean aircraft standard is a whole different standard so we would not put this in an airplane but we fire it up and it's amazing how powerful when this we put it on a truck we put chalks on the truck you rev it and actually pulls the truck which is in park over the trucks yeah so we cut the prop down a little bit to cut some of the so that's a Packard built Rolls-Royce yeah have you know this is amazing because the Rolls-Royce engines were done to Imperial standards English thread there were no computers they had to take these apart so they could build them I mean the the English probably built one a week we had to build one an hour so had to redo the whole thing what year is this this is about 38 39 yeah so just before World War I well World War II had started already in Europe yeah well Jay I mean this is this is one of the best Barn fun Hunter episode I've ever seen because the cars that Jay has found he's had the wherewith W to mostly leave them alone and just fix them mechanically so they're good drivers and fun to own yeah that's the I mean the whole thing if you can't use these for an intended purpose I mean CU When you get behind the wheel you really get the sense of because to me when I was a k think oh the ' 50s must have been so boring but then you realize it was really one of the most exciting period you had Hemi engines you had just the Hemi was the most powerful American engine since the dusenberg it was the first one to make more horsepower than the dusenberg and so many people raced them and ran them and then you had the Jags the Maseratis and all those great designs you know when when people thought aerodynamics look like was so much sexier than what aerodynamics really look like it looks like a teardrop that that's okay or a raindrop but when you look at a you know a Maserati or a Ferrari how exciting those cars were back in the day cuz that was their idea of what like people think aach is aerodynamic a Volkswagen Bug is more aerodynamic than aach is but but it looks exciting right right well Jay thanks for hey thanks a lot thanks so much and you know happy Hunting today's a good day

Channel: Hagerty

Views: 615,499

Keywords: Hagerty, Classic Car, Classic Cars, Hagerty Drivers Club, collector car, enthusiast car, collector cars, jay, jai, leno, lenno, mercedes, gullwing, gulwing, 300SL, Sl300, barn find, fiat, italy, italian, coupe, sedan, e-type, e type, jaguar, MKI, MKII, Daimler, chrysler, hemi, duesenburg, duesenberg, model X, model A, reveere, revere, indian, cheif, trike, 3-wheel, rare, cunningham, cuningham, C3, briggs, rolls royce

Id: -hlUgxw40_g

Length: 32min 44sec (1964 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 17 2024