Jay goes British! A mashup of some of the best! | Jay Leno's Garage

[Music] barry griffin built this one so if there's a problem you call barry up it's like driving your library somewhere [Music] [Music] hmm [Music] with the turbocharged engine you probably might have some turbo lag but with the electric motor it fills the gaps and gives you instant torque straight away and that's what you're feeling under your right foot [Music] well the 12 sees the wife's car now so this is in the normal mode this is your softest most comfortable mode that you can drive on the street with [Music] of course we've got a lot of modes to go and we're on a track and you should really try the race mode to get the most out of the car but in the meantime why don't you press that button and see what happens so the engine is off now and i'm pure electric right correct so you can easily exceed 100 miles an hour so i'm not running through the transmission am i yeah i mean but i'm not going through gears you can do so you just can't hear them but you can go up through the gears you've got a rev counter there in front of you just the same the power you've got in e-mode is the power of a you know a normal hatchback saloon car so if you've had enough of driving in e-mode all you do is again press and hold the e-mode button hold it down yep and that will re-invoke the petrol engine there we are nice and smoothly so it doesn't interrupt the balance of the car you've got to be such an incredible driver to make the f1 do what it can do i mean this one has all sorts of traction control and evs and you know it does the shifting for you you can actually go way faster in this than you can in the f1 but the f1 is a totally different car from a totally different era you know this is the first truly modern car of the 21st century so i find that really exciting with the uh the hybrid technology and all you know it won't belong to major city centers a lot of european cities will probably ban uh cars that put out a certain amount of emissions well with this car you put it in e-mode and you can drive down to the center of town just as if it was a a prius so if i go into race mode so you have to bring the car to standstill because we're going to quite dramatically change the characteristic of the car right now so now we're stiffer but the the esp is a bit more open now by the way so you've got a lot more grip a lot more um freedom as well so the traction control is much looser it's amazing so [Music] [Music] jesus [Music] you know you just think you're going to slide off the it road grips it imagine this car with somebody who knows what they're doing oh my god [Music] oh [Music] unbelievable wow you know i got my mp412c i thought it was the best handling car i'd ever driven double that oh my god it's the new f1 [Music] you know we like kind of wild outlandish perhaps even goofball stuff here and this is a mini cooper as you can see it's obviously a racing mini cooper but uh well it has one really unusual thing that i think you will find fascinating this is the kind of more money than brains project that i enjoy you know this is really cool we'll show you what that is in just a minute let's meet the the builder designer the owner of this car jacques andres john coming in here how you doing good jay how are you okay so we start out with a 2002 mini cooper correct yes sir and as we know mini coopers are front engine front-wheel drive correct yes right right but that's not enough for some people so you put another engine in the back that's correct yeah another mini cooper engine absolutely two of two everything's got two except for steering wheels oh all right very good so why not just a big 327 chevy in the back there you want to keep it mini cooper uh couldn't afford that much horsepower out of one engine okay so i thought if i had two affordable engines i could meet up to that horsepower reliably okay so is it a matter of taking the front wheel drive of the front wheel drive mini literally turning the whole package around and dropping it in the back it's not as simple as that but is that the basic idea that's kind of the basic idea and actually they go in the same direction because we're so pulling the same direction right uh but pretty much the same you know all i had to do was make the mounting points and the cooling system and kind of the front of the car in the back with the rear suspension but it actually has front suspension in the rear as well now when you turn the key are you starting each engine individually they both start at the same time individually yeah this car so two individual packages uh so if the last three hours of your race event yeah one kapoot's entirely you can disconnect the shift lever on that particular power plant and run either the front or the rear engine oh i see to finish the event rather than throwing in the towel i see well it's it's fascinating and how complex is this the gas pedal the throttle works on both simultaneously that's correct right okay and again they are fly-by-wire so electronic gas pedals so i'm not dealing with cables going to carburetors just aligned correctly so it's actually worked out quite easily right okay yeah well yeah that's yeah it's fascinating how about the transmissions how do you how does this shift linkage work there yeah well easy enough too because this this was always a big barrier with the old cars you know this is a model of what they did in the in the 60s with the original 20s and they called them 20s right so we've you know kind of taken on that name for them as well and the battle back then was mechanical linkaging a bunch of brackets and pivoting points and so forth they only lasted about a half an hour if you were lucky right the modern engines are mostly shift by cable so those push pull cables like for boats to turn the deal back and forth so it's actually very simple again another very easy item to make this a two engine two transmission project which is instead of two shift cables underneath your shift lever push pulling i put four so i fabricate a little bit of bracketry underneath those shift cables of the original shift cables and made 14 foot cables that go along the front of the car and all the way to the back and kind of aim at the car the same as the front does so that actually as you'll feel the the gear lever is actually more supple than some cars with that short shifter stuff in it now it looks like you have two tachometers absolutely yeah so the engines are not together so do you ever have the does one ever run ahead of the other is that ever a problem uh when one has a misfire yes yeah or you melt down the pistons as i've done okay so then you kind of see the rpms but actually the the biggest telltale is the little vacuum gauges because it's supercharged engines right so you really keep your eye on the boost gauges to see how each engine is running in sequence and you don't run in in the same class as just single engine minicom oh yes we do yes so when you pull up do you say i mean do you ever get in and just not tell them you have another engine in the back back there that's right that's right okay there's your actually looks like you've got plenty of room for one person anyway oh yeah very very roomy and there's your two tachometers that's right you've got your uh i like what you've done there with all of that it's very nice got all your gauges nice and laid out yeah very cool it's really terrific and it's sort of and it's done on a budget right very much so i mean it's it's this is uh uh after hours of working on the weekends you know uh buying composite materials from the internet um filling up your your gas welders that sort of thing well that's what i think people really appreciate about the website is when we find things you know anybody can do a money no option project i mean obviously so it's fun to be able to do it on a budget and uh are you married with kids and all that married with dogs oh married with dogs similar even more expensive i wonder if this could be a street car i think it's time to fire it up okay clutch in yeah okay so well let's turn on the main power on that on off switch right here no no the big round one okay turn to the right okay then we're going to turn on the the rear engine ignition because that holds a fuel pump where are we this one here okay okay then we're going to turn on the fuel pump which is this one okay then find a bit of neutral okay then the rear engine first because it starts nicer this button here go ahead then this normal ignition over here right here no no right oh the key yeah this one's a little bit more stubborn but there you go pretty cool yeah i felt the regular mini was getting too good a mileage so i want to put another engine in [Music] [Music] ah [Music] um [Music] [Music] well that's pretty cool listen you know you got to make this streetable i'm sorry this is uh this is the ultimate canyon carver all right so it's a lot of fun but it's got a lot of grip and it's got uh it feels like 500 horsepower oh yeah great no no it really pulls it's uh i mean it's too bad we can't really take it out on the street but anytime you want to go on the racetrack with it let me know hey we will let you know because this is just the kind of more money than brains thinking we like here at the website so really good it's it's fun and it's all done on a budget and it's classic american ingenuity and engineering so jacques thank you very much so much check out his website he's got a mini he can make it do things for you see you later mike come on in this is your car right yes jay thanks thanks for having me come over and yeah we're happy to have you i really miss these i remember 1964 was that eighth grade i getting my hot rod magazine and seeing carol shelby lowering i don't know if ken miles was involved but by lowering the engine into one of these sun beams and was it lord roots is that who it was roots was quite shocked that they put this american engine in this car and it just seemed like the most brilliant idea they sort of called it a poor man's cobra that's what it was called definitely back in the day and to me for all attempts and purposes it pretty much was a cobra same engine same transmission same concept yeah same concept a little shorter wheelbase but uh yeah mine you dropped the clutch and you wind up doing doughnuts because the wheelbase was too short but i loved it i just i couldn't afford to keep it at the time and i had to get rid of it so i i've always lusted for another and yours is about as nice and one that i've seen tell us about this car well thanks uh i've had this car about five years i don't know the whole history of it but it's a 66 mark 1a there were about 2500 of those built you know i've kind of gone through it i the engine the original 260 they all had 260's and was shot so but i kind of decided to go with the 289 because that's such an iconic engine and uh so i drive it i autocross it you know it's kind of a daily driver and uh we have a lot of fun and the clubs has a lot of activities we even have a parts warehouse where we get some parts made that we uh we can't find elsewhere because a lot of people might not know this this car was pretty successful when it came out but what happened was sunbeam but got bought by chrysler that's right yeah and and that was what maybe in 67 67 and no way was chrysler going to sell and warranty a car with a ford engine in it and i remember chrysler had the 273 v8 that went in the barracuda but i think the distributor was at the wrong distributors it wouldn't fit in this car did they ever build any with it i think they built a couple to try but uh it just wasn't going to work so the car became just the what a two year only car well three three and a half yes the last year was the mark ii they put the 289 right chrysler actually was selling them and the pentastar was on the fender of about half that production right but i mean the irony is they're warrantying a ford powertrain longer than ford did back right right yeah this would never do yeah it was a shame because it was a great idea you know this is back in the day when hybrid meant totally something totally different than it does now hybrid back in the 60s meant an american engine in a european uh car uh like like the motto verdi like the iso like any of those cars the cobras certainly and of course the sunbeam tiger and for the longest time these cars were stuck in the area between 12 and 20 something thousand dollars and then in the last couple of years they seem to have uh sort of hit their stride and people are going oh my gosh what have i done i've got to go back and find my first girlfriend you know and and so they they wind up now they're up in the 50 000 yeah really nice one 50 i think there's a lot of debate in the community you know we some of us don't want them to go into six figures because then you kind of can't enjoy them and then there's others who kind of wonder well everything else shall be touched you know was gone into the stratosphere so you sort of have mixed feelings but it's very affordable parts are available right the drivetrain of course is all ford stuff yeah and we were talking just the other day about the generator a rebuild kit is what 29 29 bucks yeah yeah i mean try that with your ferrari i can get parts down at autozone yeah yeah because it's basically a ford with the european drive train uh that is a custom wheel i imagine correct that it's a moto leader wheel which was actually period correct and there were a lot of dealer added on options back then um they were generally called lat or la tiger because hollywood sports cars was a purveyor of those yeah those included uh headers uh dress-up kits uh pos attractions traction bars an amazing array of stuff yeah those if you are restoring a car and you can find some of those that are authentic they're real fine yeah and this has a few of those yeah probably the biggest bugaboo about this car is the wheelbase is a little short it is it's 87 inches yeah for all the power it has it was kind of and the more power you put in it the more that exacerbates the short wheelbase you end up kind of doing this swap ends pretty easy but you know as a fun car to just drop into second gear put your foot in and feel that long torque pull on it it's a lot of fun to dress really yeah it's a poor man's cobra for sure yeah uh and what where end did it use it was a dana 44 okay uh with a 288 rear axle ratio which uh seems pretty tall but the the original wheels and tires were 13. yeah yeah most folks have gone plus one or plus two today i still have the original wheels and tires but they it's like driving on some yeah you know bicycle tires yeah did you ever think of putting the five speed in it uh i thought about it some some do it it's pedaling pretty fast on the freeway one thing that helps is i have a little bit larger diameter rear tires so that that under drives it or over drives it a little bit but a tree mech five speed is a pretty popular modification and it's amazing how simple cars were back in the day this was considered a well-equipped sports car it had roll-up windows a radio oh my gosh and a top that actually sealed from the elements yeah i mean there's no head no head restraints of any kind but they were actually compared to their competitors at the time like uh triumphs and uh mgs the cockpit's a little roomier yeah uh they had telescoping steering wheel they had a flow through ventilation height those are modern seat belts those are modern seat belts so when i got it that was the first thing i was going to put in and this is the first car i ever saw this tiger stripe on to go going over the hood that way yeah the i don't know the whole story on that stripe there there was a kit that went a tiger stripe that went over the tail and that was a lat option a previous owner put these on i was going to take them off but then everybody says no i kind of like them and those mini light wheels these are uh pana sports but many lights would have been uh the choice back in the day let's open the hood let's take a look okay i remember on mine to change this rear spark plug didn't have to go in under the yeah there's a rubber plug in the driver's foot well uh that's the easy one to get to the rest of them uh i've got the scars to prove really when that rubber plug is out your foot is on fire you want to seal up the firewall right now because we've been driving on a date and a woman going stop get out and this woman just got one just tried to get some some cool air she was so hot from driving in this car what do you have on there for carburation uh it's a holley 600 cfm which is correct for the day they came with two barrel uh auto lights but uh in the day everybody tossed those out they put on a edelbrock f4b manifold and this is basically the same manifold uh they also threw away the air cleaners and believe it or not that air cleaner is extremely hard to find yeah and what are you looking at here about 300 horse with this one uh yeah actually 288 at the rear wheels which is about 320 at the yeah at the crank it's a real healthy motor you have to light the fuse real careful is this a single master yes it is okay uh some go to a dual master there's a mazda piece that i thought by a lot of cars kind of stop at that 67 yeah you know that's another reason uh chrysler pulled the plug to make it comply with 68 rules that it would be way too expensive right right right well boyan is a great looking car nice sized trunk night sight driving can we take off a ride absolutely cool yeah and a great looking car just that classic sort of english look and i love this this green color as well it's not exactly british racing green is it what is it well it's it's a little more blue than the uh the the sunbeam title for it was forest green uh but yeah this car was repainted red and then uh somebody repainted it back to green i think green is the classic no it came originally discs in the front drums in the back is it still drums in the back still drums in the back uh they don't do much the the shoes will last just about forever yeah and uh but it's got the girling discs in the front and then a uh three to one uh girling uh power brake booster which is really important and what is your weight distribution well i was surprised that we uh we actually did weigh it and get the wheel weights and it's this car is a 51 front 49 rear well that's amazing because i thought originally weren't they like 57 and not probably not quite that much but since i have aluminum heads an aluminum manifold that's probably 130 pounds off the front end but it's more balanced than you might think i love the proper smith instruments i love the white on black dial very nice big analog clock at 60 you're turning about 2 800 rpm classic english motoring with just a touch of american power [Music] want another episode of jay leno's garage uh if you've been to this website before you know we are huge aston martin fans uh this is the brand new aston martin varage this fits somewhere between the db9 and the dbs i think aston martin is the most seductive brand of automobile out there there is nothing sexier than these you know when you get inside and you drive them there's a certain feeling about aston martin it's very hard to convey there are other cars in this class with more horsepower uh there are some that are faster but not as seductive as the as the aston martin i guess what they've done here is they they're at the point now they've been very successful and they're coming out with cars to fit in between the range of cars that they have and this one is right in the middle this combines the sportiness i guess of the db9 with the luxury of the dbs it rides like the repeat extremely comfortable car it's a true gt car i would say more than a sports car and i don't mean that in insulting way because a lot of people buy sports cars and for some reason they're not really happy with them because they're they're too hard-edged they're just for every day you know the wife or the girlfriend or whoever's think this car rides a little rougher it's a little noisy this is a car that can do on the road what a sports car can do on the road you've got a sports setting on the dashboard you press that button and it makes it all a bit more hard edge exhaust gets a little bit louder suspension tightens up that type of thing it's got the carbon ceramic brakes nicely styled wheels for lep00 tires you know you take this on a long trip and you just want to keep driving that's the fun thing about it it's hard to convey it's the kind of car you look at it and extremely good looking extremely sexy when you drive it it sort of wraps itself around you it's got four seats well i guess if you have some very tiny friends they could sit in the back there i love the orange stitching i understand there is also a a sport option that deletes the rear seats and puts in some kind of buckets i wouldn't want any other seats in this extremely comfortable i drove a uh dbs with the sports seat in it and i thought you thought they were too hard they didn't fit the car to me it's not a track type car it's not that type of automobile it's just something to be driven from la to san francisco stay off the highway take highway one you know take the fun roads up through the mountains let's take a look around the car as you can see the doors open sort of up and outward making getting in and out extremely easy one of the most beautiful interiors i've ever seen over 200 man-hours go into building each one of these 70 man hours alone in the interior you can either go fully automatic or your paddles as well six-speed transmission nice sized steering wheel one of the best looking dashboards i love the white on black gauges i love the little increments it's a nice balance astons don't have a key they have what they call an emotion unit and it's glass i mean that's very cool you put that in and it starts the car up right there big v12 let's take a look under the hood here you're not going to be changing plugs in this yourself okay it's just not going to happen but then you don't have to these cars go 100 000 miles a lot of spark plug change as you can see extremely rigid you've got this cross brace here as well as here these v12s are built in germany hand built fantastic motor 490 horsepower about 420 450 foot-pounds of torque something like that but it makes 85 percent of its torque way down low so you never feel as if you're uh you're missing out weight distribution is 50 50. weight distribution is perfect it's got a transaxle so you've got that perfect 50 50 weight distribution now this wonderful little hand built in england by barry griffin barry griffin built this one so if there's a problem you call barry up you get his home number barry come down here and take a look at this but that's aston martin i mean i like that sort of hand-built uh quality i like knowing who the guy is that built my engine either get that kind of stuff or you don't actually not a bad sized trunk actually for this type of car um to me you can't beat the corvette for obviously trunk space because that whole glass area lifts up but this is actually pretty good size you get a couple of small suitcases in there or golf clubs if you like that type of thing this is a fast car this car tops out about 186. i'm so sick of this top speed stuff 209 versus 212. i mean it's ridiculous to me as i've said a million times at the website all the fun happens between 40 and 120 and this is where this car has got plenty of grunt all that torque is available at that speed let's take it for a ride as you can see it's got a great sound [Music] and of course you got those incredible breaks but the big question is will it do a burnout because at 70 miles an hour you're barely turning 2000 rpm if you want to make it even quieter you just press the sport button and turn it off and you're back into cruising mode again but uh everybody should drive an aston martin at least once in their life just so you know what it's like this car is not cheap it's about 209 000 that's a lot of money still cheaper than a dbs but uh you know it's one of the great automobiles of the world and aston martin is one of the iconic marks of the world and as i said it's a company that was floundering not that long ago and it's even come back so strong and with such a terrific product you know this is a completely modern car there's nothing old or old-fashioned about it the chassis the weight distribution everything is just done the best as it can possibly be and it says at 3 900 pounds it's not a light car but it carries its weight very gracefully um and let's face it in the modern world 3 900 pounds is not heavy for a car anymore i think a bentley is like 50 200 pounds something like that it's like a thousand pounds more so it's a middleweight i'll call it a middleweight i mean women look over and go hmm you know they give you that look that's a nice looking car there are certain cars jaguar you know the original xke that's a car that made women look up and go oh what's that and uh i don't think there's any better looking modern car than the aston martin even friends of mine who couldn't care less about cars that drive some sort of prius thing will look at this and go oh my god what is that oh my god can i sit in it i'm just happy that aston martin is doing well it's amazing in the last 10 years they've produced more cars than they did in the whole history of their of their manufacturing up to that point just an iconic automobile bentley was born in 1888 and he died in 1971 so he lived a full life he lived long enough to see his cars win them all five times and then they kind of fell into bankruptcy and he had to work for other companies but then near the end of his life he got to see the club was formed the bentley drivers club and of course uh bentley's became revered marks and he was you know just welcomed anywhere at a concourse or whatever so it was nice to see had no children married three times but he had no kids he is one of nine he was the youngest of nine kids born in 1888 to fairly wealthy parents he was always an engineer even a young man he he apprenticed with the great northern railroad in england let me show you what i'm talking about he was a locomotive engineer first and you can see the sort of locomotive like qualities in this engine here although this is an enormous engine it is only six cylinders there's no head gasket because there's no head it's all one solid piece this is how you get around blowing head gaskets these are carburetors or carburetors they call it this is an auto vac it's basically a fuel pump what it does is if you were not running this car for a long time you would open this up here you'd fill this with gasoline and as the car ran fresh gas would be pumped into this and it would drain i open this here and then it gravity feeds down into the motor um interesting thing uh nice to keep it all original you have a battery in coil and a magneto because you have spark plugs as i said before on each side this is your water pump right here notice the honeycomb type radiator uh this is the greaser i just tightened that to shoot a shot of grease into the water pump uh aluminum fan everything here as as as it was in 1931 it's hard to improve on perfection and you have the engine light here this lights up the engine compartment like i've often said with these kind of engines they're difficult to work on because you have to go through the bottom to get to anything to get to the valves you've got to go pull the engine go through the bottom as i've said before it's a bit like going to the proctologist for dental work you know it's a little tricky the actual engine ends here uh you can see uh bentley's locomotive background in the designer's engine because the overhead cam is not driven by a chain or even gears but by conrods by imagine the wheels of a locomotive you know how they they go like this well that's what you have here at the end of the crankshaft you have sort of quote for lack of a better word another crankshaft that turns the uh cam shaft and you adjust it by putting washers in between it and the squish of the oil kind of tells you how much you have how to adjust it and that's sort of how you adjust the valves on this thing it's a fascinating piece of engineering these were bulletproof engines at the time it's cast iron the crankcase is made of electron which is a kind of a magnesium aluminum alloy bentley pioneered aluminum pistons and aircraft in world war one he designed aircraft engines and he was sort of the father of the aluminum pistons for lightweight and better compression and all that type of thing and uh just a fascinating guy quiet guy kept to himself couldn't be more british you know not a real show-off kind of guy he built his first car in 1919 in fact the man who bought his very first car i had his son on the tonight show uh his name was uh llewellyn i can't remember his first name he played q in the bond movies remember the james bond where he says to sean connery i never joke bond i'm always serious and uh that's what it was so it was totally restored the wheelbase is 156 inches the biggest duesenberg was 153 and a half inches and the biggest car in the world the bugatti royale was 169.3 inches so that's the only one with the wheelbase bigger than this thing and at the time this car was built it was the biggest automotive engine ever produced in england and also one of the fastest cars i mean the idea behind this car was you would take this across the channel and drive across europe at 75 80 miles an hour and you can do it easy i mean i take this on the 405 freeway and it's a wonderful car more than keeps up in traffic 75 80 rocks steady it's amazing it has mechanical brakes but it has a servo vacuum mechanical brake so you can't tell that they're not hydraulic brakes they work amazingly well this car is pretty much all original and i mean obviously been restored and repainted but the original radiator original matching engine transmission whatever a special four-speed transmission was developed especially for these cars you know it's funny the this and the duesenberg are two of my favorites because they were the most advanced cars of the period and the only ones you could really drive the way you drive a modern car today i mean do somebody you can go 75 you accelerate onto the freeway you're not holding people up the duesenberg had twin cams four valve per cylinder this is a single cam four valve plus another but this has a four-speed transmission the duesenberg had a three-speed transmission it just showed you different ways that people thought americans did not like to shift the less shifting you had to do the more prestigious or more powerful the car was you know this was noted because even in fourth gear you could slow down to 10 miles an hour press the accelerator and still pull away cleanly without you know bucking and that type of thing just because of the tremendous torque of this motor as i say the setup is completely stock we haven't modified it in any way what size are these wheels i'm not even sure i've got to check and see they're pretty big let's show you the let's start at the back of the car this is kind of the cool part here now you see it's very easy car to get into and oh my god it's so comfortable there's so much room in this thing let's see you've got a little table here and you've got storage compartments down there just to ride back here it's like driving your library somewhere you know it's just the beautiful wood i mean it's just classic english design all the elements are here you know the finest leathers most beautiful wood you've got lights everywhere i got these little ashtrays here because everybody smoked back in here you know sometimes i just come here in the garage there's nobody around ah just taking a little nap just crash out here you know you've got down filled leather cushions here i mean it's amazing how comfortable this car is to ride in and to drive [Music] you

Channel: CNBC Ambition

Views: 82,448

Keywords: CNBC Prime, Money, cnbc, tv, television, cnbc tv, finance, cnbc money, cnbc finance, cnbc channel, cnbc television, business, cnbc business, jays garage, jay lenos garage mgb, jay lenos garage tour, jay lenos garage mustang, jay leno british cars, jay leno garage british cars, british cars, jay leno driving, 2002 twin engine mini cooper, 1966 sunbeam tiger mk1a, 2011 Aston Martin Virage Coupe, 1931 Bentley 8L Mulliner Sedan, 1931 Bentley

Id: fixIeAsbTow

Length: 37min 52sec (2272 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 02 2022