Jay Leno on Elon Musk, the EV market, investing in cars and his car collection

[Music] so catholics have the vatican soccer fans old trafford in manchester and for car guys like me jay leno's garage uh jay thanks again for bringing us hey guys wonder where they're going catholics have the vatican i go oh boy is it totally different i am in the wrong oh i see but yeah i see you're making a compressor yeah you know that's why you let people finish what they're saying okay you know i try right i try so anyway thanks again for having us here sure on hallowed ground if you will well not really i mean it's it's a garage and everything here runs and rolls explodes makes noise i mean that's sort of the fun thing i didn't set out to have a collection i just never sold anything and some of the cars are very valuable but some are just cars i like corvairs ford falcons cars i grew up with you know type of thing and the collection runs the gamut of older classic cars and newer yeah it's there's no theme to this you know i hate when people only have red cars you know or something like that you know it's just i guess the theme would be anything of historical or technical importance anything that was a noble failure the double steam car even the corvair was not considered successful but they sold 1.8 million imagine you sell 1.8 million of anything now they make you president of the company but in the 60s the mustang sold 3 million yeah 1.8 million what is that you know i mean it's almost funny by comparison that kind of shocks me because knowing that now the reputation that corvair has been kind of a car that was a lemon in some sense but but not the the corvair was a very innovative automobile i i think it's one of the greatest american designs of all time when you look at a 66 course and now yeah i'll take it to a show and people go is this a karma gear is this european is it some kind of uh a bar no it's a you know they've never heard of a carver you know i've only heard of it because of this sort of really big fascination in classic cars these days right the market is sort of really kind of exploding and you know we just had monterey car week wrap wrap-up uh hagerty said there was 470 million dollars in sales at the auctions uh this year blowing away 2015's record year right what do you think is going on in the class well when money goes down art automobiles collectible guns if things go up people put their money into something more tangible well i'm going to lose my shirt i might as well enjoy doing it so instead of putting it in a 401k or something i'll i'll buy something i can use and enjoy and hopefully it goes up in value i mean this is fairly recent in in the sense of 25 years or 30th you know when i was a kid my dad was always amazed that somebody would pay more for an old car than a new car my dad would get a new cadillac why would you buy a 30 year old he got a brand new cadillac i mean it made no made no sense to him he just didn't get it you know and it was just a different time and it's only i mean my my brother bought a porsche speedster a 58 poor speedster for 800. i think in 68 uh fixed it up sold it for 1200 my father thought oh my god take get that to get get get it out of here get the money mike my dad couldn't believe he made 400 profit most recently a friend of mine well this is a while ago too 20 years almost uh he bought an f1 mclaren for eight or nine hundred thousand that's it okay got well this one was new oh and within a few years he got an offer 1.3 million and he loved the car but he said i'm never going to see that kind of profit again and he sold it of course now they're worth 20 million dollars so this idea as cars as investments is fairly new i mean to me i don't look at it as investments because i would sell my home first everything else would go first so the idea that it's worth a lot well it's very nice and it makes you look smart but i think for a lot of fans and you can speak to this is that a lot of people are coming in as the investment people come in and it sort of makes it more unaffordable for people who really like cars to get into that market is that sort of a thing that you're seeing well there's a an upside and a downside to both of those the upside is as cars become more valuable people who make parts to fix that vehicle say hey this could be a worthwhile endeavor mechanics who repair those vehicles can make a living i mean there's a college uh called mcpherson college in kansas and they give a four-year degree in automobile restoration this is the only country in the world where to be a mechanic to say i'm a mechanic you know there's a there's a garage here in burbank has my favorite sign it says we specialize in all makes of cars well how can you specialize in everything i just it just sort of makes you go to germany and you have to have a degree you have a paper that certifies that you are you're a trained mechanic yeah you went to work on the car yeah we're here you just go i'm a mechanic oh you said he was a mechanic you know and you're a mechanic you know so uh there are kids that come out of mcpherson college and they start at you know 100 bucks an hour you go to the classic center in germany or a lot of the heritage automakers now have classic centers where they make parts available for their older cars and people make it's like restoring the old masters paintings and things of that nature so i that's the upside to it you know i can remember when you could buy db5 aston martin's for 2500. i mean they were just another old car and then the james bond phenomenon and all that and then it just hit the roof and now they're a million three a million five but more being saved cars that would have been thrown away as parts cars are now being taken back and restored yeah so there's a flip side to that enthusiasm yeah i think that's okay i mean the idea is to get on the market before everybody else does try and figure out what a modern collectible will be like for example to me a modern collectible would be a first generation miata easy to work on no airbag no crazy electronics a little bit electronics not much but just simple fun to drive nice to look at clean design you know that would be an example the the taurus show from the late 80s that front-wheel drive that yamaha v6 engine very powerful very fast you know the idea is to try and if you're knowledgeable about automobiles and you like cars whatever you like will probably go up in value because other people will like it too so you try to keep ahead of the market i know you're a big e.v evangelist you own a tesla for many years and you have even the platinum for a while um elon musk just said that they sold their three millionth car right about a month ago do you think anyone can catch up to tesla and musk right now or are they sort of in the driver's seat when it comes to you well the thing you have to realize about elon which is very clever he came to this garage in 2007 with his prototype the roadster and that and that early when they had a two-speed transmission and a couple other things right and i remember sitting and he's telling me about he said what i want to do is build charging stations all up and down the coast and i'm going okay that'll happen here like oh that sounds good but you know he started building the infrastructure almost at the exact time time he started building the car so when the car debuted you could drive la to san francisco and now you can go anywhere in the country i mean you see a lot of other automakers get in the ev market oh you can charge it anywhere no you can't really you might but it's 110 you're going to be here 18 hours and you know so i i think he should get a certain amount of credit for leading the charge because before elon oh it's a golf cart people would joke about electric oh they're slow then whatever it might be so i i give them a lot of credit for it i mean i think the ev will be the savior of the classic car industry really yeah because much like the automobile was the savior of the american horse you know in 1900 in new york city 60 tons of manure dropping the street every day i mean people got dysentery and hot weather horses like a junk man's horse would drop dead in the street they'd cut the reins and leave the carcass the thing would rot and people get and all of a sudden henry ford comes along with model t and blows a little puff of blue smoke in your face well i'll take blue smoke over manure any day you know so that was oh okay so now horses are primarily for recreation and there are more horses now than there were in the mid-1800s because people use them for enjoyment and beauty and and they take care of them and and that's the same thing with cars you'll use your ev to sit on the 405 wall i mean sitting on the 405 freeway in a 426 hemi getting eight miles to gallon makes no sense at all so you drive you then on the weekends okay you take your hammer you go to the car show you go to bob the big boy whatever it might be you know so yeah you'd especially a steam powered car in the 405 not the best option right right so you mentioned ford i wanted to talk and talk to you about that you know jim farley i spoke to him at monterey and he's a big car guy he's he's racing cars at laguna seca he also split the business into two units to sort of capitalize on we need something faster that's why i'm very proud of american manufacturing everybody in ford gm dodge they're all engineers now in the old asia but this is bob from uh from admiral washing machines he's going to help us with with the marketing of this and maytag yeah yeah maytag i mean that's what they did they brought marketing people in and they put go fast stripes on it like a like a ferrari it's got a stripe on the hood just like a ferrari but you know but now you you got you got like royce the president of gm he's at nurburgring setting records with cadillac i mean it's very funny so but you have real engineers the businesses are lean how they build a corvette for 65 000 i have no idea i could barely paint one and restore one for that so the fact that it's done in a union shop and it's using high grade a lot of magnesium a lot of aluminum it's not steel and and torque converted transmissions it's dual clutches and i mean i i'm really quite proud of american manufacturing they've done an amazing job you know that corvette kind of my first saw and drove in and reminded me of mclaren for like you said yeah third of the price for the third of the prize and it kind of brings you back to you know you got mary barrett gm you know jim farley at ford do you think either one of those is sort of the next level of uh uh from the eb kind of like you know hierarchy right you got tesla do you think it's ford or gm that'll be kind of the next level in terms of that kind of competition well i i think america itself has always been about egalitarianism making it available to everybody you know the the smart thing about america was anybody could buy a model t the idea in germany or france of the average person owning an automobile i mean it just seemed ridiculous but to make something affordable you know like to me the greatest book ever written is still charles dickens or christmas carol because it was popular it was accessible it was the first time you could improve your life without having to die first to go to heaven and come back you could just change your life just by being a nice person and this was a concept that people just thought was unbelievable when i came out that oh this rich man helps this poor man and both their lives are improved how simple could it be you know and that's what it is america was never about building premium automobiles about building working classes they used to call it i mean cost you build premium automobiles now but i mean i think that's the key it's volume really is what it does yeah it seems like you know these days with such skyrocketing new car prices the the blue collar your main street kind of guy is buying used cars to survive but right i wanted to talk to you about that about affordability and and again ford real quick about that the new f-150 lightning an electric truck that you know is promising to come in at a competitive price point uh i drove it i think it's a great truck you know it's amazing you can weld in the truck it's got 240 in the back yeah so do you think that you know you're you're a guy who works at a work site construction worker uh really professional kind of uh tradesman are they going to go hop on board the fmp lighting yes this is what i want yes you know why i know that because in the 50s trucks had a bench seat three speed on the column and a six cylinder engine you know air conditioning in the truck what do you miss what are the owner of the family this guy i mean you weren't a man you know trucks from manly things you know and then all of a sudden all of a sudden oh you have air i mean an f-150 is basically a lincoln it's comfortable you can do everything with it you know the funny thing about it the government's really responsible for that because i think back in the 80s they put a five percent luxury tax on any vehicle more than 30 thousand dollars that was the deal anything above thirty thousand was considered a luxury car so you paid five percent tax so manufactured but you didn't pay it on trucks so then they said they they came out with something it was not a success but it was a trendsetter the lincoln blackwood this was a luxury truck and the five percent of the purchase price that you saved in tax you put into leather interior standard air conditioning electric windows and then suddenly oh then you got real value for your money you know you could get a truck with all this stuff in it for less money than the equivalent luxury car you know so uh yeah so it was really the government with that that five percent that's what spurred people to you know we're very clever here in america we don't change our habits you just find ways to get around them you know like i was never a hummer guy i thought the big noisy dirty rolling coal all that kind of stuff so rather than eliminate it we just make an electric one a little smaller a little lighter and you know it's an amazing it's a great vehicle i'm stunned at how good it is i mean that always that always sort of makes me laugh the way we figure out ways to i want to eat cake every day but i still want to be an athlete all right well let's come up with some kind of cake you know instead of eliminating it or smoking and people smile you know oh let's vape that's that's stupid we'll always come up with different ways to spend our money and have fun yeah you know speaking of that you know we talked about um evs and stuff and president binding signing the inflation reduction act we won't get into the naming of that but big another extension of that tax rate for eb so is that like you said a tax rate for trucks spurred that growth are we going to see more ev adoption with that oh sure i mean it took 75 years for every american home to have a telephone it took five years for every american home to have a computer so i think using that same sort of thing you see how quickly it's moving now i i mean suddenly people who would never consider an ev you know there's a psychological thing of seeing 698 what you see they go past that gas station sign although the ev is not free it just kind of seems like it's free because it's not seven dollars a gallon five ninety five it's not thrown in your face every time you go it's a hundred bucks to fill this car you know it's just you just sort of plug it in oh the next day you magically have quote a full tank and oh okay no more gas stations no more weird smelling hands you know yeah yeah exactly um you know i want to also talk about kind of what you're up to these days and you know the seventh season of jay leno's garage yeah gonna come out and first of all did you ever think this show would go seven seasons and and can you tell us what we can see what we can expect coming up in the new season uh well you know we have you know i was just down at spacex with elon and that's fascinating you know what's so funny everybody seems normal until you realize oh this kind of like a genius guy you know we're down there and he's got this plan to put send a thousand he's building a thousand rockets to go to mars all right it sounds like some crazy pipe dream but then you go there and you see hundreds of these jet engines lined up and you go oh he's really going to do this you know and the fact that as he's talking to me scientists and physicists are coming over going um oh yeah yeah yeah and he understands manufacturing you know in addition to rocket science right yeah i mean he understands it's like elon says right now will cost over a billion dollars to put one gallon of water on mars he wants to get that down to a hundred thousand dollars a gallon which is still crazy but it's not a billion you know and so just that thinking outside the box thing which i find uniquely american you know that's why um i never got this i always felt bad with this banning of immigrants thing that they had a few years ago you know was shutting the you know steve jobs was syrian i mean all the doctors all the people come from india you know america will seduce you with hamburgers and hot dogs and music my favorite example of this is we used to do this jaywalking thing we'd knock on doors ask people questions i remember going to one house knock on the door and the grandfather answered the door and he's got a vest and a tie and he speaks spanish he goes okay his son comes over a little fatter than his dad a little heavier kind of sloppy he speaks angry he talks to me so so then i meet his son he's got a t-shirt with some obscenity on it yeah you know the just the deterioration progression the progression of downhill you can see the grandfather's the fittest one in the family because he's the immigrant he came he worked hard and everybody else is profiting off and that's what america's about you bring these immigrants in and they invent stuff and they go and they become citizens you know it's a great place to live you've got the pizza is great the music's fun the girls are beautiful you know that's what happens you need new immigrants all the time you know i i visited with the the zinger guys the other day and i know they're coming up on your show yeah right right father and son team i mean great uh story there american manufacturing again right um and so i guess this season you've been highlighting a lot of these kind we highlight them we have them on the show we have elon i'm shooting this week with uh uh president biden we're doing oh wow yeah he's a car guy you know he's still got his corvette right yeah yeah yeah so we're gonna have some fun and take some evs out and talk about that uh yeah it's it's it's uh it's a great show to do the idea is everybody has some connection with the car you know i talk to celebrities all the time and they go i know nothing about cars i said well did you ever do anything with a car with your dad oh when i was a kid my dad had a cadillac and we'd go for ice cream every sunday get a cadillac gets a celebrity go for ice cream on a sunday and talk about it you know and then that's pretty much it i mean the car is a huge part i think of american culture right you know uh lastly jay i know that you also have various other business interests and one thing i discovered was you have a a business where you uh all these cars you're detailed and and cleaned with a specific uh product well you know we developed our own product yeah i mean the smart way to do it is a big company comes along like 3m or something gives you a huge check and you hold up well this is the you know we developed our own stuff here we quietly put it out just to see how people reacted to it we got great reaction people liked it people ordered and then reordered and now we're national we're in walmart and a bunch of these big stores i expect the usual snarkiness dude you're trying to cash in on things okay maybe but it's a good product people seem to like it and it's doing well so keep our fingers crossed yeah i i i heard you have your own chemistry it's not just something your label no no we we developed everything here at the shop we it out on all of my stuff and it seems pretty good i mean the one that got us started was cars don't have chrome anymore yeah none to speak of and polishes and i would use other polishes i notice on the rag i'd see you know metallic specks you know like oh it's actually peeling off a layer of the crumb so i said let's find a company and develop a chemical that cleans without having an abrasive you know and that's what we did that's the one that first took off and then we built the whole company around that so we'll see these products in walmart now big deal coming up and yeah seventh season of the show coming up later this month so jay thanks again for joining us thanks appreciate it [Music]

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Views: 924,856

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Id: kSu7fNDKqvM

Length: 21min 14sec (1274 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 03 2022