INSIDE Jay Leno's Motorcycle Collection

somebody pinched me because it's true it's not every day you're in the garage of a TV Legend Mr Jay Leno sir people in this garage every day it's every day believe me believe me I appreciate it so much thank you big time fan of what you did in television also what you do here I think it's amazing oh it's more what I do here this is mostly cars and motorcycles anything that Rose explodes makes noise basically is what it is I've always been interested in motorcycles because it was you could always store a dozen motorcycles where you park one car you know so when you grow up in a small house oh I could get more bikes you know I could have one car you know so a little bit of a little bit of all these are for us superiors a lot of people not familiar with this make these were the first quote Superbikes in the 20s all guaranteed to go 100 miles an hour that doesn't seem like much today but it was like 200 miles an hour is now like when I was a kid I remember when I first got my garage in the early 90s Craig breedloved and there were like Five Guys in the 200 mile an hour club now anybody that could buy some supercars in a 200 mile an hour you know so it moves so quickly but I I just have a Fascination for these bikes this is the most complete rough collection in the world correct well I guess so yeah I mean this is a lot here I always thought they had the most beautiful gas tank and motorcycling if you take a look this is sort of the everyday bro this is the one I use quite a bit a thousand CC's Japan wow you know they call it a jab V-Twin that's not a slur yeah it doesn't mean Japanese it means J.A presswick you know a lot of people say oh that's a jet mode they go hey that's racist no that doesn't mean that it means J.A presswick but uh yeah yeah they're wonderful bikes overhead valves and just it's like opening the back of a watch you see everything moving when they run you know and with the exception of virtually no brakes that's probably but they're wonderful bikes and that you can run 75 80 Crews all day on the freeway well what I love about you too is is am I saying that I live by is don't hide and ride them and I think you might be the only one that has a daily driver Bruff Superior so many of these are tucked away in museums and you're actually out there well when you live in California you can do it every day because almost every day is a nice day it's been a little unusual lately with all the rain but you can drive them all the time and a little traffic in Los Angeles is horrible eight miles in any direction and there's no traffic you go up in the hills up in the crest and it's just great and I mean I'm not I'm not a racer by any sense I'm not even a good enough Rider to make the Superbikes do what they do so these old just the fact you know people aren't amazed that you got there quickly they're amazed that you got there at all and the stuff that I like to write you know so sure it's just fun to kind of preserve history and get a sense of what it's like you know it's so admirable how you get out there and ride and speaking of that I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about your accident we're so glad you're okay now I'm fine it was terrible I drive my Indian foreign guy had a wire across the road without a flag on it I came around I turned to turn around this parking lot and the sun was I said what and boom that just hit me luckily is only going like 15. if I've been going I would have gotten decapitated so I was pretty lucky thank you Lord we put you up on Facebook and immediately the prayers started coming in let's hope James okay let me ask his did you ever find out why that man had the wire up you know I stopped by well he he had his parking lot blocked off okay and there was a little bit of a flag but you know I went to the guy I go look I'm not a lawsuit guy it's my fault I should have seen it and I'm not I don't I'm not going to go after somebody for it's not like the guy deliberately had Road Rage or Grammy off the most that's good you know so so we shook hands and the next day I went back there were cones there were flat he had every conceivable thing so he was doing the right thing so I I I I never pursued it that's good to know because when I first read about the incident it reminded me of when we were younger in trail bike riders if somebody didn't like us around that was what they would do is that they report up and we tried to express the people that is very dangerous you could you could kill a motorcycle rider like that exactly exactly I'm so glad you're okay and on the up and up well I wanted to ask you too I have a pressing question that I wanted to ask you for about a year yeah if I think at one point you said the Vincent Black Shadow is your all-time favorite motorcycle well interesting now the breast Superior was for lack of a better word a put together bite George Bruff he went to the best engine company Jep he had them blueprint the engines for him uh he had somebody else make the gas tank he used Harley-Davidson Forks uh so he put together what he thought was the best bike my favorite sort of all built motorcycle with the Vincent you know Philip they developed their own V-Twin they had the engine hanging from the frame they had that the front suspension with the blade oh this one on my mind uh you know so that was so that would be the best if I had to pick the best bite the one that has the most romance to it is the breast Superior because Lawrence of Arabia owned eight of them and he wrote about them profusely and he was the most famous man in the 20th century him and Muhammad Ali you know nowadays people don't know him so much but back in the day he was a war hero and all this kind of thing so he wrote about the broth and in fact what they call the best written motorcycle literature was done by him writing abrupt where he raised a biplane you see right there up in the wall he was riding in one of these bombers came over and he raced he got down on the tank and he raced him down the road you know when that actually happened I I it was interesting but it makes for a good story it sure does so so so the bruffs you know history belongs to those that write it in the English write everything down so there's so much written about the Bruff they were so expensive I mean they were a price of a small house so they were owned only by quote Rich gentlemen had them you know so it was it wasn't like America where anybody could buy a motor vehicle sure you know if you don't have much money then you got a motorcycle but in England nobody could afford a car because there's a road tax and so people bought motorcycles they put sidecars on them you know so so the the Bruff was like a motorcycle it cost more than a car which just seemed crazy at the time sure so so there's a lot of Ledger now but certainly the Bro the Bruff and the Vincent are my two two favorites the Bruff being purpose built for that specific you know from the ground up and the and the breath being sort of put together you know very cool well me being cycle drag I think you made two great choices but as you know we like some fast sport bikes as well so I see a high boost out there I see a H2 out there if you could pick one I would say your favorite metric bike or your favorite Performance Bike what would you say it is well back in the day I bought one of the very first cbxs oh awesome because I thought that just seemed crazy 100 horsepower you know that's the days when they're going to limit motorcycle Stone 100 horsepower but they didn't thankfully but I love the cbx and then of course that's when the real hyper bikes came out after that uh you know I've got the BMW which is the RR which is you know that's probably the best all-around I've heard that you know I like it because you can go anywhere on it it's got the reliability of BMW it's not overly obnoxiously loud um it's extremely fast I mean it's you know it's funny to reach because in the old days you bought a motorcycle you bought like a a Sportster and then you'd upgrade at different carburetors and you sort of earned your horsepower now you go out and you can buy motorcycles with 200 horsepower which just seems crazy it is crazy but you know so it's it's a different thing so I grew up in that area where you kind of earned your horsepower when the Vincent Black Shadow came out it had 55 horsepower and there were rumors that the government wanted to ban it because it was too powerful nobody needs 55 horsepower in a motorcycle it just seemed crazy you know but you know every year the bar gets raised this one is interesting this is what they call a petrol tube sidecar wow see this you have your gas tank and this is hollow you pre you fill it with this holds about two gallons and then you pressurize it maybe two to three pounds and then when you when that tank gets low you reach down you open the tap and the air pressure pushes it through into the you know this is why it's tough to talk to car people from New York City because they're not really some guy came in he said oh what's happening I said you know what that is oh yeah yeah I said oh oh you're so most people from New York are not real bike oh no when the auto comes out it said Jay Lana has a motorcycle with a canoe attached to it and I go no it's not a canoe it doesn't I realized no I was right the first time yeah that's true that's true it's funny how there's that divide yeah is it's rare to find a car person who's also a bike person but you are both yeah I've always been both you know like I said anything that rolls explodes makes noise I I just like I like Transportation I like the idea the whole idea of it you know um yeah so that's an unusual one and that's a rough racing bike from the periods it's amazing I see a motorcycle like this and I'm saying this separates the men from the boys if you look at the suspension yeah running 130 or 150 and that is pretty crazy but the one thing American bikes had over European bikes were they were Dependable because in America you're just covering great distances all the time you know so you wanted something that's easy to start compression ratio is pretty low I mean this probably hasn't been started a month or two a month or two I love that that I go to so many collections where the bikes haven't been started in years you have battery tenders on every single one I love it look at this look at this that's amazing wow but you see how easy it starts amazing amazing wow you've got all kinds of Power you know what's interesting I'll show you I sure wish my two-stroke started up that easy well I know you know these like when you when you sold a bike in England it had to have two brakes didn't say where they had to be so they put both brakes on the rear let me show you how when you ride this thing okay you're on the bike right in fact do you know what these are the the grips yeah but this is something people wear store bikes and they forget this The Handlebar ends here the idea behind this bike when you're on it when you're rolling down the road you slide your hands back and this takes the pounding out of it because you see now you're just relying on the rubber here okay so it's like you you solid mount the engine and rubber Mount the rider okay but when you drive this thing okay you've got your brake you got your foot clutch then you have a this brake breaks the right side okay this one I left that right this one breaks that so when you come to a stop you need to do this put on both wow but then now you can't hit the clutch so you throw the hand clutch in and then when you pull away you go back to the foot clutch slowly release the hand clutch as you open the door you just sail through stop lights excuse me excuse me yeah yeah it's a bit of a challenge right but but it's so much fun to ride so back then you really needed a skill set and you had to be familiar with the bike you couldn't just jump on a bike like you can today yeah that's probably true wow but it's a but you know dead reliable you have a proper modern reasonably modern ignition system well you saw how easily it fires unbelievable sometimes the first two just to pull the gas in while we walk if you don't mind I want to sneak in one question about media since you are the king of Television the Undisputed king of Television media is changing very rapidly as evidenced by what we're doing by what you're doing a lot of people are cutting the cord Cable's going away YouTube a big thing right what do you think about where we're headed well I just Supply content how you choose to utilize it as somebody else's problem and that's what I do I mean oh it's streaming okay now it's streaming oh we're on cable oh okay oh it's antenna you know basically you still need product that's what this is how people choose to to read it or look at it or watch it it's not my problem so that's not the business I'm you know if I was a corporate guy oh how do I you know make this work but I just give it to somebody yeah however you choose to use it is it fulfilling to you to know for all those years television was everything when when you were front and center I mean so many people you were the soundtrack for for my youth every time the news ended mom would turn on Jay Leno yeah that's okay but people forget they got a short memories so you move quickly you know you try not to dwell on them well in my day you know you don't want to do that for sure well thank you very much let's continue here wow it's a nice old Indian unrestored yeah understood yeah I think that's fair to say only only original once a lot of these are understood yeah this is a scout with a with a chief motor in it uh this one is 26 Harley JD I imagine we got a story here huh yeah she runs I mean it's all original 1918 Pope wow here's a WR AP oh wow this is the flat track bike this thing is it's really a handful just a torque monster this one this is a knuckle that is uh this bike was so Advanced for Harley it was they thought it was actually too advanced because they had you know overhead valves you had four gears instead of three I mean it just seemed like oh this is too complex for most people you know and it's a wonderful riding bike it seemed enormous back in the day but it actually seems small when you ride it now what blows my mind when I see bikes this old is how ahead of their time they were with the Aesthetics how appealing the bike looks it's just a beautiful motorcycle well it really only looks that way because that's the way it has to look I mean that's the way the engine you know I mean form follows function kind of deal that you know they called the knuckle because this looked like the knuckles on a hand but when they designed it that's the best they could make it and oh it turned out to be you know sure you know sometimes a lot of the hindsight like when I first heard a group called The Beatles I went it's kind of stupid name Beatles but then you hear the music you go oh it's a cool now it's a cool name like the name Bruce you know Bruce was kind of a odd name when I was a kid when you have Bruce Springsteen coming oh and it's a cool name it's a cool name yeah you know so it all depends who who sets the standard I would say it worked out for those two guys these are some of my favorites these Hendersons these KJS these are fabulous wow there's a nice Scout right there it's another Indian Four this Henderson I am the second owner wow this is in the uh that's a true piece I understand the new well this is a replica sidecar I've got the sidecar because this was a police bike and it has a reverse gear so it's meant to have a sidecar so we took a fairly modern side car and just patina it up so I'm not trying to pass it off but the bike is all original it was on the stand the New York Auto Show in 1931 then they swing they they folded this sat in the window of a bike shop in Connecticut until 1948 wow until the guy I got it from bought it and now I got it so pretty low mileage but it's amazing nice running bike do you have a preference in terms of original verse restored for your collection it doesn't matter okay if it's original enough not to be restored that's perfect sure like a lot of these you know that's one that Indian the knuckle this has an engine out of the c18 Allison how in the world did you end up with that I've had that for 20 years that's a long time my good we got to get you to the drag strip you know it's funny and an eighth mile drag you lose in a quarter mile you'd win because it's it's a turbine so once it spools up then it pulls she said it pulls hard but off the line it's not it's okay you ever seen one of these no what are we looking at here wow what in the world you've never seen that no where did you find this uh it's German you know there was a time when people didn't naturally assume that the engine went in the middle so the idea is that these when you come to a stop the engine stops so it says in the manual when you come to a red light you should orbit until the light changes and then continue on yeah I imagine pretty hard to pop a wheelie on one of these they did oh this is a racing model it did okay in Circle Tracks you just cranked the wheel and then open that throttle and it's just wow yeah that's amazing yeah but just figuring how you get the gas into the cylinder I mean it's so German that it's hilarious yeah yeah and you know rolly free you remember him the famous yeah yeah this is all this is rolly here oh wow these are all the Rollies trophies wow we knew roley back in the day such an amazing collection of photos and memorabilities oh yeah there's all kinds of cool stuff it's all kinds of cool stuff what would you say is your most prized motorcycle well if you're talking sheer value of the bruh Superior superiors okay some of those are close to a million bucks I mean that's amazing yeah and this is a Munch mammoth wow another very rare motorcycle yeah that was the most powerful wow in the early 60s number three that's the first one with electric Stars wow this this could actually answer a trivia question is was this this was before the Honda CB oh yeah well 10 years was this the first four cylinder inline four well you had uh yeah you had various Italian motorcyclists and there were other four cylinders not mass produced we were having a debate what was the first inline four a lot of people say the CB created the sport bike I don't know if you agree with that or not well you always had so you had Vela said that was a sport bike that goes back to the third Isabella set right there well let's take a look yeah there's Indian chief one of my favorites the re5 rotary whoa that's an awesome bike yeah those are great fun what happened to the Choppers Chopper craze is totally over I I'm glad it's over right I never got the idea of make it slower more dangerous without brakes and uncomfortable you had one from OCC right oh that's the biggest piece of chocolate you know something I'm I was so stunned at how bad it was built you know they bought an engine from a guy who did a nice job built on the motor I have Atlanta it's a Harley knuckle replica motor the motor is fine you know I was writing it and it stops on me and I realized the electrical system is is fused through the rear tail light so if the rear tail light breaks or blows out the whole bike stops oh gosh this is I thought it was dangerous it didn't stop it's geometry the steering it was just yeah I mean they were meant to be you build one for the fire department looks like a fire engine sure Postal Service that looks like a male carrier or something but as for motorcycles the ride just horrible hopefully the titles honored your warranty on that one on that phone they're down by me now in Clearwater Paul Senior isn't and he says the same thing he has a lot of his choppers on display at a bar and he says hey these weren't made to go cross-country these were made to take the bike I made to go across the bar I mean I was just stunned at how poorly I mean dangerous I mean forget you know just geometry is all of it sure do you still have it yeah how about that Buell very cool the RG over here this has to be one of your favorites I imagine this too I remember when this was the fastest bike you could get in 75 oh my and it costs that right over there I'm my MV Agusta the Envy Augusta is just amazing Ducatis I love what a collection you can't beat just the Triumph bonnevilles and yeah classic yeah just yeah just a lot of fun stuff very clean and then you have a race bike over here too is this that was a gift from Yamaha that's pretty cool yeah that was nice I don't I don't that's not a street bike what's your favorite form of motorcycle racing just road racing okay yeah yeah we got to get you to the drags one day if you got that oh yeah I like to do that that'd be fun sometimes that'd be very cool how about that Kawasaki H2 back there you enjoy you know what's interesting about that it it is incredibly fast it's great it does seem a little topic because that supercharger is on the top and when you go into a corner you feel it's like this right right you feel the weight of the supercharger soda not the weight just harmonics maybe um yeah it's it's good but I was surprised because I'm so used to having all the way down low you know and with that supercharger on top like that you you don't realize how much it affects you you know can I understand I mean if I was a racer I would know how to compensate but I I just because I I switch bikes all the time so it's not like I ride one all the time so you kind of go oh this feels a little weird then you get on the Big Chief there the Indian and that thing is hysterical what do you think about the electric bikes that are coming that seems to be the next thing I got one next door I got the uh I say energica but but it's not a I'm pronouncing it wrong it's Italian it is great it is 180 horsepower I'm stunned at how good it is that's amazing uh because I'm like it's smooth it's quiet um it just pulls so hard uh no it's a great bike I have to admit I really enjoy driving it or riding it I mean I think the big game change will be synthetic fuels okay if they can come up with synthetic fuels that right now it's 25 a gallon but if you can get it down to five or six dollars a gallon because nobody doesn't like the internal combustion engine it just doesn't like the fuel that it burns it's dirty it's messy it's you know Brewing the environment blah blah if you can get it to be clean what's the problem then it's like a watch sure just a mechanical device that moves yeah keep our fingers that is great well Mr Llano I can't tell you how much you guys we appreciate this we wish you the best in all your recovery like I said there's no way Jimmy Fallon is this cool yeah it has this many cars the last question I like to wrap up with Legends yes what is the best advice you could give somebody the best life advice you could offer right now with everything you've learned throughout your illustrious career what oh immune with motorcycles anything anything what would you tell a young person right now who might be watching this I mean you've had so much success look at this amazing collection well I mean don't take it seriously you know if you do what you like it's not work and then you're doing what you like to do like to me people go oh it's not I'm filming a car show but I'd be here working on my car anyway so I get somebody to film it and pay me for it why not that's what I say thank you thank you again here thank you I appreciate it very much there's some decals for you stay safe how about that stay safe out there anytime you ever want to come to the drag strips you got to know guys thank you thank you very much we appreciate guys was this awesome or what he's a legend a TV icon how about that since it's YouTube guys if you like it subscribe in the middle if you like another video here's another one for you thanks so much Mr Atlanta you are the man thank you very much thanks

Channel: CycleDrag

Views: 330,130

Keywords: jay leno, jay leno motorcycle, jay leno garage, jay leno motorcycles, jay leno motorcycle crash, jay leno cash, jay leno bikes, jay leno garage 2023, jay leno accident, jay leno interview, jay leno collection, motorcycles, jay leno motorcycle accident 2023, jay leno motorcycle jet, jay leno motorcycles Youtube

Id: 6qPaxEQaAuk

Length: 24min 32sec (1472 seconds)

Published: Mon May 01 2023