Exclusive Tour of Jay Leno’s Rare Historic Motorcycle Collection | Brough Superior Motorcycles

foreign [Applause] between 1919 and 1939 George Bros father he built a bike called the Bruff and his son built the rough Superior these were very very expensive you could buy a house in England for the price of one of these costs don't be afraid of it son [Music] yeah man we got a treat for you guys today where are we well we are in Jay Leno's garage and he has cars and motorcycles all kinds of great things and we're gonna go and see the bruffed superior motorcycles yeah we're just entering now let's go say hi to Jay let's do it well this is a rare and fantastic moment I mean we're standing with Jay Leno in his garage I'm like thrilled to death to learn all this stuff how you feeling about this well I I'm really excited David whom works for Jay took us on a tour here last week and we found this incredible collection of motorcycles that Jay has put together actually it's not that rare I'm here every day people come in and they go come on in so it's actually it's not that unusual because you guys just happen to show up in here we go so always fun to talk bikes with people so that's what kind of you to have us today oh yeah I am no problem and maybe tell us what I'm not having you he just visited if you're visiting get the parameters straight this is not a Tinder date okay I'm not having the guys these guys are coming to visit we're looking at motorcycles so cool this is going to be good and we love that and where do you want to start well what room are we in here well we call this the rough superior room brush Superior motorcycles built between 1919 and in 1939 George Bros father he built a bike called the broth and his son built the Bruff Superior he wanted to beat his dad these were very very expensive you could buy a house in England for the price of one of these costs wow because English it was not like America where you're building things for the Common Man and the masses you know you sort of build things for the Upper Crust people who could really afford it prices No Object type of thing you know I mean these gas tanks are about 12 15 pieces sodded together and if you want to make one today it's probably 15 to 20 grand to have somebody do it for you and this is one of the very first built this is the 1919 model I think it's the oldest one in existence there's no more than four or five because again they didn't build a great many bikes maybe 20 a year or something like that but George brough is one of those guys a bit of a showman a PT Barnum kind of guy but he had the goods to back it up he races on motorcycles and you look on the post you you see he won he he was a good racer and his bikes were good he just kind of exact everything became well I'll give you an example these were called the Rolls-Royce of motorcycles yeah but it was called that because George Bruff heard that some Rolls-Royce people wanted to come by and see his motorcycles because they're so expensive you know so he had all his guys dressed in white suits with white gloves you know and you have them like you know doing it and when the Rolls Royce oh my so impressed that the cleanliness of the workmanship and all that you know see he was that kind of a guy a man named uh T.E Lawrence who was the Lawrence of Arabia he was a big fan of these motorcycles he was at the time the most famous just about the most famous person in the world laws Arabia had ex-boys with the Turks and the Arabs and he became quite famous I'm sure you all saw the movie at some point and a man named Lowell Thomas who was a big brother Thomas which I know it was you know one of those kind of radio guys and he would talk about Lawrence ever Ray but his exploits and Lawrence actually changed his name to Shaw because the publicity is so overwhelming and he always exaggerated and made it you know bigger than life and he's a huge man well he's only about four five four or five five so he he he just he he didn't seem to like the public monument but he had eight rough superiors he was very illiterate guy very well educated whenever CE Lawrence would write to George bro how much he likes his motorcycles he wouldn't publish it in magazines and newspapers like that and that's how the motorcycle became famous they were all guaranteed to go 100 miles an hour from the factory one at a time when 60 miles an hour was a mile and a minute that was unbelievable to people going a mile in a minute and they go 100 first of all there weren't any roads in England you could even go 100 on really because not nothing was paved but that's okay it all added to the legend and when you look at these bruffs you notice when George broke was a young man they were Sleek they were small with big engines as he got older the bikes became more bigger seat more travel more touring oriented more comfortable you know just as you would in life you know you started as a young Firebrand then you like this one here this belonged to the police chief in England somewhere and this has what they call a petrol tube Sidecar you've got the sidecar which is a beautiful I mean you see what this would cost to make good Heavens this is Hollow okay so you unscrew this you put about two and a half gallons of gas in the frame really you pump it up with the hand pump to pressurize it then when you this tank goes low you reach down you turn the tap and the air pressure forces it into the tank so you have to to stop you can keep going you know but there was no reason to have such an elaborate motorcycle in England anything with less than four wheels didn't pay the car tax a very reduced car check so since most people couldn't afford a car they they had side cars so the idea of why would you have a luxury sidecar rig like this when you could buy a car for even less money so this kind of thing was fairly rare it was don't feel you know the motorcycle shows and the public would come in and drool over them and oh my God wouldn't it be cool to have you know that kind of thing so I'm pretty much the same way it is today you go and you see these bikes that are unobtainable you know and that's what this was now you've ridden these before are they they're harder they're harder and different to ride you mean a sidecar race yeah yeah and plus it's on the wrong side because in America the sidecar would be on the other side so you have to get a little plus you have no break so I mean there's a whole lot yeah but it is fun to drive it is fun to ride I I enjoy it so I saw something that you enjoyed looking through these bikes it was one of your well I like any motorcycle you can see through like like a Harley when you look at an early knucklehead or JD or something this it just it's like on the back of a watch to me you can see all the pieces and how everything operates you know I agree with that and that makes it fun yeah uh you know the few times have you ever seen a Vincent Black Prince or Black Knight they're enclosed they came out in the 50s gotcha and 55 and 56. in fact when they did the movie 1984 and 1957 the first version of it they went to the Vincent Factory and they got the whole whatever was left of the black black princes and Black Knights because I thought that's what the world would look like in 1984 that's the kind of and they weren't far off really kind of interesting but they didn't sell because you couldn't really see the internet is how how it worked so how did you come about the collection right up on that wall there see that see that one that says Classic Bike that was the first time I ever saw a Bruff kind of Thunderstruck me at how cool it was it looked nothing on it they did need to be their big engine with a lot of mechanicalness to it things happening you know overhead valves you could see the push rods and all kinds I found one and I bought a couple early on back in those days there were about five thousand dollars when I use Harley as maybe 2500 you know something not not much you know but that seemed outrageous at the time you know in each year they just got higher and higher now they some go for six seven hundred thousand dollars some of these bruffs you know but they were popular because they were written about and because they're written about they became desirable you know there's a big fight going on what's the better British motorcycle events in Black Shadow or the broth Superior well I technically I would give it to the Vincent Black Shadow because they built their own engine what George broughwood he's looking around and go who builds the best motor as well had the reputation overhead valves you know and all that kind of stuff so okay so we went to them and said blueprint me you know 10 of these engines and I want to do this I want them nickel plated or whatever it might be and he put those in his bikes then he got the best brakes the best suspension much like Boutique manufacturing now you just buy the best value get Brembo brakes and you get somebody else's fuel injection or whatever it might be and he would assemble them they were assembled motorcycles but assembled with Kerry put his own gas tank on him and just had little styling touches which are kind of interesting back then motorcycles were not stylish they were just utilitarian you know there's no reason to Chrome anything because there wasn't garages in England he just left it outside so whereas that that looked like a piece of jewelry a piece of sculpture you know what do you think how they evolved I mean really it was bicycles and then you put a motor on right right you know it's an another way to get around and this is the last rough not the very last one certainly the last series this one has the matchless SS 100 engine in it but you notice when you compare it to the first brough the seed is bigger it's more of a Touring bike you got full fenders to keep out the rain it's like you might have a drum brake too you got a drum brake in the front yeah yeah these Castle Forks were just stolen flat out from Harley-Davidson just copied they were they were the best for handling Forks of the period and since there was no front brake on you know they would Buckle if he had a front brake in them but people didn't really need a front brake because most roads were dirt or gravel I mean you don't think of traveling to 18 miles an hour but that's what most people did you just sort of putted along because you know huge ruts in the road and it's England and it's raining and the road has got a high Center and you know so it wasn't big enough now you have a real fancy for these gas tanks yeah I think it's the most beautiful gas tank as I said the motorcycling you know copy that was Bridgestone the Japanese one in the 70s they built that GTR and that had the same tank on it I thought it looked just as good on that as well I like this little windshield yeah you're tucked yeah that's that's the idea but this is more of a Touring bike and this you can ride like a regular motorcycle you can go 70 on the freeway and it's fine and have you had it up to 100 miles an hour any of these bikes probably close certainly I mean whatever it says in the speedo he can't disclose that with high speed out his field at high speed was it really these are very very stable this this castle front fork was very very stable uh it's just you're running on beaded tires with no brakes at some point you got to go okay this is stupid you know just the fact you're going there at all or you're driving and riding it at all how many are in the collection here I think there's about 25 here wow before the SS 100 was you had this this is an ss80 this is basically a 100 but this is the precursor this was if you put overhead valves on it would be an ss100 but again wonderful bike you see how this works here you see this this is your oil gauge you do that and you pump yourself yep a couple of dollars of oil and you you count these like if you're driving at like 60 right you have maybe 20 drops a minute so you want to yeah yeah I mean just just crazy stuff this is your throttle you have air and gas so as you're going down the road you're adjusting these two and there's a lot of work involved in these things yeah one thing I love about your collections is the fact that you know them you use them you're not afraid to be on them they're great fun I mean that's really the the thing because a lot of people don't restore a bite they make it look restored you know but they haven't gone through it and you could buy these for nothing after the war so every one of these was ridden hard and put away wet and just thrown in a ditch and you know for the price of even fixing one of these up you could buy a brand new BSA or trying for something so to have something so labor intensive is one of these it just seems crazy it wasn't until probably the late 70s that they started to go up in value where people went hey that's well that's a pretty cool looking bike you know then they start researching the history and all of that yeah so this one looks like it has kind of been left alone just to be cleaned up this is 1924 yeah wow this one had an interesting story yeah this one was fully restored to brand new like 30 years ago and then they were taking it to Retro Mobile in Paris and they decided oh let's make it look like an old ratty bike so they they de-restored it I give David such a word and they made the pain flaking at it really yes but internally it's all been done they just made it look kind of patina it's so interesting because you know we we travel the two lanes and for me and us we always call these things time machines right right because when you get on them and you go riding to a small town you go back in time yeah and this is going back in time a long time yeah so I know you have people here that work on the bike how do you find mechanics that really understand some of these well the great thing about handmade stuff is hands haven't changed if you find some electronic Ducati from the 80s good luck figuring out the ECU it just this you can look at it and oh I see how that's supposed to work right I you know it is it's it's like like look in the back of a clock you can figure and if you need to fabricate something yeah yeah I mean that's pretty much the way it is obviously you want people have the skills that can do that but people who work on these type of things usually like to take apart watches and stuff like that not so much fixing televisions and computers but yeah I mean I think you'll see these a lot longer than you'll see some bikes from the current day which when the electronics and the Plastics wear out yeah where are you yeah and that's not to denigrate them in any way it's just you look at a relay box the only way you know if it's any good is you get another one and replace it you how do you tell which is a good one you you can't you know unlike a car where you're isolated from things you know to feel like you're going 60 in some car you got to go 100 you know a motorcycle is such a even 45 miles an hour can be exciting on something like this because you're right in the middle of the Power Ranger you know it's fun you know it's not all about going fast and having knees down and all that kind of stuff you know sometimes it's like you say just that thump of a Harley there's nothing like a V-Twin that pulse you know yeah it makes it fun so with these I know if you had an old Harley and a panhead or knucklehead and you want to start it there's a lot of videos of people struggling starting them do the are these hard starters are they uh let's see let's try one and see now I can honestly say it hasn't it's well I had my motorcycle accident in January so I haven't had it out but let's see here oh hang on I think my seals are dried out that's going to be fuel going there yeah so like I say he uses his stuff I like that let's see what happens here all right this is I've got a uh a bad knee but you don't have to do this well you kind of do okay you kind of do I hear some movement that's a little Pleasant yes I want to give a try it oh don't be afraid of it son I'm feeling it I'm feeling her she sure it's not I will edit this sentence you know it's funny these English things are so crazy expensive but you go back to the American bikes or the period and they're dead reliable I mean yeah well I'll show you the difference come come over and look at this Ace over here here it is right 1924 Ace I think it went 132 miles an hour in 1924. 1400 CC's 375 dollars if you wanted an ace yeah but a Model T was 240 oh wow yeah Jose are we going again foreign [Music] well you got four cylinders so you got four times the chance of a spark when you kick it it sounds to me like a a fighter engine ready to go it looks like a crude engine but it's actually pretty sophisticated almost 1400 cc's and you can see the tap yeah kill switch you guys know what these are all right uh to pump the gas uh or open it so it flows right no no what this is is in the winter time can't get your bike started you pull this out you scoop up you pull some gas you stick that in the carburetor and you eject it there you go directly into the carburetor this is such a complicated bike to drive if you go down the road now notice in England he had to have two brakes on a motorcycle so what they did was they put them both on the rear wheel to stop you press this one just pulls a break on this side you push this one it's a with the wheel on the other side well what do you do with the clutch well since you can't reach the foot clutch here's your break here this is your clutch then you use your hand clutch yeah well that holds it up then when you want to take off again you got to put on a foot clutch release the hand clutch let out you know so you find yourself just sailing through and just say thank you sorry excuse me just go silent you know so that's kind of the way it goes we're not stopping here but I think this is just just a great looking bike you have oh the glove box glove box yeah again these are expensive you know because in England a motorcycle was a practical thing in America was a toy yeah you know Hooligans and Roughnecks you know I bought motorcycles the most power young family didn't get a sidecar you got a Model T you could buy second-hand cars in America for twenty dollars ten dollars you know so but this is 324 wow this is a lot of money but it was fast and again this has the grips or come out here oh wow but you can't just say hey get on this bike it's a one down and five up well you know if if it's what you grew up with and then then you know that to be normal it's like driving a Model T is actually pretty intuitive unless you've never driven one and it doesn't make any sense you know well I'm impressed every bike you've gone to you know how to yeah that all the different switches and and you've got very low compression and you saw me I just dropped my foot and it started yeah yeah yeah so you're not kicking a thousand CC's you know right we're cooking 1400 but you got four times the chance of right right I like that this here this isn't built by a guy named Bob Shotwell when he was 17 years old he wanted a car and as far as we can't afford a car if you want to go to the junkyard and get some parts and build them so he built this he bought a Indian motorcycle engine and he built the whole thing himself uh using Model A fenders and parts and he drove this car from Minnesota to Alaska to San Diego and back to Minnesota with his brother people think it's an Indian car Indian never built a car right and when I got it he was an elderly man close late 80s and it was rotten in his backyard and he was afraid that some bikers would steal the engine and you know just junk the car she said I'll give it to you you promise to fix it up so that's what we did we got it back here we got it running and he sent me some pictures of him when he was a kid he was a big guy look at this long leg wow yeah but drove this thing everywhere yeah that's what it looks like when we pulled it out it's all pretty had a lot of body rot and everything I mean I think the journey to even find things like this is kind of interesting as well well the fun thing is they find you you know because people know I don't argue about price and I I'm not trying to flip it so you know you get a lot of these old guys they didn't have kids or anything and they just want their stuff to go to a good home so that's what we try to do well that's a great home and I I love the you're preserving history and yeah I mean you think about even just 20 years ago the cards yeah get let alone a car back in 1930 yeah yeah it's fun it's fun so there's a car in here in the other room yeah it's a Ford Galaxy oh yeah and you have a me it has a Sentimental meaning yeah she'll show you that one what is the deal with this car well this car was a one year only offering from Ford the GTO had done very well and the idea was to build an adult's muscle car so they took the Galaxy they put the 428 engine in it at the time it said seven liter here had the wheel covers although I have mags on now that looked like mags and it had bucket seats and all that kind of stuff I tricked my dad actually into buying one because my dad would just go to this every two years or three years you'd buy a car and you go in the showroom give me that one you know so so we had had a 64 Ford my dad liked that so let's go up he go up to Shawsheen Motors in Andover Massachusetts and we're walking around there were no galaxies on the floor the Mustang was a hot thing than in Falcons you know but so where's the full-size car say oh okay let's go to the Chevy dealer you can order on this Leno you know my dad so I don't want to order it now you can order that I've been here a month or something okay uh yeah I want the Galaxy like my other one you know the bench seat and all this kind of stuff you know so I said can I pick the engine remember I'll let the boy pick the engine you know you know it's like Tom Tom Lawrence was the salesman thing I pulled him I said look we went to 420 and we went to 428 with the police pursuit package the muffler delete option I couldn't trick my dad into getting the four speed you know I guess the automatic Channel and something like that even ain't nobody signed it how much that's a 3800 it's a lot of money I love this level again he doesn't even know what he's doing now so about six oh they call the cars now we've got my father goes buckets it's got buckets seats for Christ's sake got another one I wonder if he can't get the all right he gets in he's looking at the car you know she puts the key and he's down there he goes it's holding a goddamn Muffler the mother so you want to muffler delete with the police pursuit factors what the hell is a police that's really pissed off then he realized he looks at me and he goes what the hell is this all about that so we all get in the car you know my dad's got it I don't know my dad puts he's pissed he puts the East down the car goes because there's cement flooring the deal here because has that contact even if he screamed at the salesman you know so when you drive him home my dad's not talking to me you know now he's just pissed you know sounding like 10 days later I'm in his bedroom looking for something and I see he got a ticket for going 110 because he drove it up to the office oh and suddenly he was the coolest boss you know all of the insurance salesmen were men in those days she was the young Italian guy hey Mr Alano's got that 428 you know so they would go to lunch if he took them all to lunch he's going 110 on Route 128 and Massachusetts her the cops pull him over he gets a ticket you know so hilarious so but anyway I wrapped that one around a tree oh I built this one as an homage same color same interior except we got a big Roush 427. oh and uh she puts out about 650 horse got a six-speed gearbox all hot skis suspension so it it's it beautiful yeah it's a lot of fun it's a nice just a big gold fast car so if you knew all that about that car at that time is that when you started your fascination or cards well I always interested in anything the rolls explodes it makes noise you know when you go up in a little town of Massachusetts there's always broken snowmobiles a lawnmower it's not like now kids don't really do that kind of stuff right more so it's just it's just what you did boys are expected to know how to fix stuff like that you know they had they had you know engine classes in high school right you know we auto shop yeah you don't have that stuff anymore you know and that's a bummer yeah like you'd like this one too I'll show you whoa this is the engine out of the Shelby GT500 760 horse it's the only time this engine has ever been mated to a manual transmission see it says Ford Motor Company one of one uh we got forward to do the uh electronics for us you know in the old days of just getting a bell housing and hooking up and trying to those days are gone so so it's all got to be done so we put a Kinser chassis in it and it's got 7-64 I mean if I had this on a 16 I'd be dead a lot of metal was a little story behind this wasn't this left for you and your oh yeah welcome yo Craig Ferguson very funny late night guy he bought this as a joke he goes literally he he had a tow to NBC and dumped on my pockets but now you got something to work on when you were telling me he was so crazy he was couldn't believe we actually fixed that up you know so now he has a motorcycle in my life since we're doing bike and yes he does Ride Harley Davidsons yes yeah he has several of them in here well we passed the Harleys but this one this is a jet bike this has a gas turbine engine a c18 Allison out of a bell Ranger helicopter out of a helicopter yeah I'll show you come I won't fire it up because it'll fill with smoke but it'll give you some idea you'll hear it [Music] and then she lights off yeah they gotta read the license plate keep back extreme heat yeah so I think you've had this at the rock store oh yeah I've had this over 20 years because I think my son was at the rock store I met you there and he saw this bike yeah it's a lot of fun so what is it and it's just the Harley guys right up you know you you pull up the Harley guys go what's this in Japanese no it's American-made son it's jet fuel kerosene jet fuel there's still anything but if you like unusual bikes I mean these have been since all along here you ever heard of Rolly free you know he is rolly free rolly free is that guy see the guy oh yeah 150 miles an hour these are all his trophies and everything here I've heard of Burt Monroe Bert Monroe as well yeah we knew Bert and this unusual bike this is a mongola five cylinders in the front wheels yeah radials is that figure that out yeah keeps it cool just to get it to run it was actually quite fast on a dirt tracker you just crank it over and that we would whip around and just pull you around because this is developed before they decided maybe the middle is the best place for the engine some had it over the back wheel some had it up here some had it in the center you know like Henry Ford you say horse doesn't push the car it pulls the car right and these are all Vincent's yeah that's that's a very rare one that's precedes the black shadow that's called the Plumber's nightmare that's the first V-Twin from the 30s this is the big single and remember I was talking about the Black Knight and the black prince well here are those right over here so you can't see through these but you surprisingly they actually run cooler because these really do funnel the air all the way right right into the rear cylinders you know but I know you mean it looks like you're you're riding a scooter or a spaceship it's like I want to see that I mean to hide that beautiful engine right like blasphemy to most right old Hannibal and how fast do these go well whatever black shadow will do black Shadows are the fastest bites you can get back in the day okay so it was 55 horsepower which doesn't seem like much now but back in the day that was a huge amount you know they were trying to ban them they were too fast and all the rumors you know right but yeah you ever seen one of these no this was one of the fastest bikes in the 60s this is a Munch Mammoth this is the third one bill the guy named friedel mooch in Germany he took an NSU car engine and he put it in a motorcycle so it was a thousand cc's and uh all hand hammered tank and yeah fascinating thing to drive it's really they're really quick there were some four-cylinder motorcycles in the 60s but not accessible to the public this thing was expensive it was probably three grand back then wow and we you know when a Harley uh two Glide was twelve hundred dollars you know so but it was fast and uh you know full weather carburetors and the whole deal wow yeah another kind of interesting piece well this was almost the last bite I ever rode it's a 1940 Indian Four with a sidecar and I was going down the street here I know I was on leaking gas you know so I didn't want to bike catch my fire so I'll turn on and go back to the shop less than a mile and I turn around and I cut through a parking lot and the guy had a wire across with no flag right now you know so I said well oh and then pull them but caught me right threw me on the ground and then the side car kept going and crashed into the building and we bent the forest luckily we Tracked Down some new Forks this is a new one these are all for you know in some ways I think it might be it was lucky well the trouble was they've also been Chrome and there's such a thing as you know you've heard of hydrogen and brittlement you know what that is when you Chrome metal and you don't do it properly it weakens it up and there's a lot of so I I figured at some point this is going to go anyway so let's just get a new set of forks uh this sidecar had so much Bondo in it over the years so we stripped it down and Jimmy our metal man's making new cover for it new pieces and we'll pull the engine on that thing and get it all back together well here here's a his example of the Bondo that was on there look at that yeah oh yeah yeah that's thick yeah that's thick so so it'll be a nice bike when it's done and next time you guys come by we should be riding it so should be riding again yeah there you go [Music] well thank you guys I'll try anytime you guys yeah it's been a pleasure we love your your well thanks same collections thanks I want to thank David as well for setting this up we appreciate that and Mark thanks Mark thanks guys see you down the road so three two one and then we'll throw our fingers to you down the road I have it wrong [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: 2LaneLife

Views: 271,100

Keywords: Jay Leno, jay leno's garage, jay lenos garage, brough superior motorcycles, brough superior ss100, 2lanelife, jay leno accident, jay leno crash, jay leno tonight show, motorcycle collection, historic motorcycles, vintage motorcycles, vintage cars, classic cars, collector cars, vintage automobiles, rare cars, iconic automobiles, Celebrity car collection, Car restoration, Car museum, Automotive history

Id: RlB5HbRfb3U

Length: 33min 25sec (2005 seconds)

Published: Wed May 31 2023