Jay Leno's crazy pursuit of his childhood dream car

everywhere you go people do this because they hear the car then they go that's jay leno i wrote a book about the chrysler turbine car and jay leno wrote the forward to the book and how i met jay leno is actually a fascinating story and what happened was jay leno has a segment that he used to do on the tonight show called headlines and they would run headlines out of newspapers that were funny and it's often because it's a juxtaposition where the headline of this story and the photograph from this story are funny or typographical errors and things of that nature and so i wrote a book a few years ago called death's door and it's got a very very dark picture on the cover and it's about an event where a bunch of people died on christmas eve and so somebody had run an advertisement for books that make great christmas gifts and it said makes a great christmas gift death's door somebody sent that in to jay leno and he ran it on his headline segment the next morning i'm driving into work my phone blows up steve you were on the tonight show last night i'm like no i was and i was at home so i think figured out very quickly what had happened and i had been fascinated by turbine cars for years i actually wrote a manuscript about the chrysler turbine car and i couldn't get it published and so i had this manuscript and i thought hey jay just cracked a joke about me i think he owes me one so i actually took the manuscript and i took a copy of death's door and i gift wrapped it because it makes a great christmas gift and i put the two of them in a package and mailed it jay leno care of his tonight show and about a week later my secretary buzzed me and she goes steve a guy who says he's jay leno is on the phone now i got a friend who's always calling me claiming he's other people it's a joke but i go this might be him so i pick it up jay leno and he goes hey steve he goes you're not mad at me are you and i go no why he goes some people get upset about the hell i go no dude that was funny i think it was funny also and he goes cool the turbine cars were my favorite cars on earth because i love those cars and i said really and he goes yeah he goes i saw one at the new york world's fair when i was i was 15 14 years old whatever it was and i actually saw them driving it around on that they had a track they were giving people rides because i couldn't get a ride so the line was too long he goes but the world's fair is famous for two cars the mustang and the turbine car because i remember that vividly but uh he goes but but you know thanks thanks for sending me the the stuff you know i appreciate that because i'm gonna hang out your car is that okay i go sure you know well a little while later the one of the financial things hits america unemployed people and jay leno is doing free shows around the country for anybody's unemployed and he did a free show at the palace of auburn hills and shortly after that he called me he goes hey steve i got a question for you in your manuscript on the turbine cards you interviewed a guy named bill carey is he still alive i go oh yeah yeah in fact i go i got his phone number right here why and he goes i can't tell you now bill carey nice guy but he's a technician who worked on the turbine cars i don't know what else he would do that jay would know about other than what jay read in my book which said he was a technician in turkey cars so i go did you buy a turbine car and he goes i'll be in touch and so then a little while later on jay called me back because he asked eva about a sherman car he said i bought one from chrysler chrysler had three of the turbine cars that did kept from the program so i said oh cool and he goes i wanted to thank you because bill carey is going to help me with that i go great i'm glad i go trust me he's going to have a ball with that because he loved those cars and jay goes if you're ever in california i'll let you drive mine so about three minutes later i'm in an airplane headed to california but no i go seriously let me drive he goes yeah absolutely anytime i go i'd love that you know i got my calendar right here so we picked some dates and i went to california and i actually went out to jay's garage and he showed me around and gave me a tour of the whole place and people ask when you meet somebody famous are they like the person you see on tv jay leno is that guy he's a nice guy he's not acting on tv that's him he gave me a tour of his entire collection of cars and my mind is blown i mean i would be happy just to see the turbine car but i'm seeing all these other cars he actually has another turbine car that's been custom built he's got turbine powered motorcycle he's got another 150 cars i don't know i lost track how many cars he had at that time hundreds of motorcycles and you can ask him a question about any one of them you know you're walking by a car go what's the story about this oh and he tell the whole story about the car and you know the first car he owned when he drove out to california from massachusetts he's got that car you know some of them are amazing collector cars some of those unusual cars he likes the story of and so we're walking around finally we go for a drive in the turbine car now i've seen these museums i've walked around a bunch of them i've climbed underneath a bunch of them i've never ridden in one before and fires it up and we go for a drive we're driving around out you know it's kind of funny going for a ride with jay leno in a turbine car because everywhere you go people do this because they hear the car then they go that's jay leno and of course if you're in california spotting jay leno in a crazy car if you see a crazy car in the burbank area is a good chance 5050 is jay so a lot of hey jay leno hey how you doing you know and we're driving around and then we stopped in a parking lot took some pictures and then he goes you want to drive it and i go sure and so i get in and we're in a big big parking lot and i go okay so he goes take us back to shop and see myself wait even i wasn't expecting to be allowed to drive this thing in traffic he's no no no drive i don't know so i get in fire it up put it here we're driving around and i i wasn't paying that much attention but i go you have to tell me where to go turn left turn right that kind of thing so we wind up driving around we make it back to a shop and you know to handle the keys and get out and i've driven a couple nice cars in my life i i've also driven like say the daytona charger that bobby isaac set 28 lan speed records in i've gotten to drive that car also but the turbine car is one of those things where there are nine of them in the world i think four or five of them run and trying to get behind the wheel want to take it for a drive it's not something that anybody ever really gets to do for the most part and the fact that i got to write a book about it and see a bunch of the cars and interview the guys and then finally get to to drive one was unbelievable but the interesting thing is that my turbine car book hadn't been published yet so i was talking to james making small talk and he goes steve he goes that manuscript that turbine why don't you get that published and i don't know you know there's a thing about car books because i had other books that got published no problem because it's it's hard to find publishers for car books and he goes no i love car books i don't know i'm not arguing with you about i love car books too publishers don't like them because they don't think car guys read he goes well if it would help you i'll write the forward for you and i go really you see i've done that before and he mentioned a couple books he's written the forwards for so i didn't have an agent at that time i'd sold a couple books on my own to publishers i didn't have an agent so i went back to detroit and i had a friend who lives in new york who was in publishing and i called her and said look i said you know i got this offer from jay leno to write a forward to a book on these really cool cars and she goes that might do it she could have a friend who's an agent give him a call and she gave me his number and i told this guy the story and he was oh the book's any good i'll you know i think i can sell it and so he actually did manage to get it sold jay wrote the forward to that book for me and that was one of the big selling points and and jay leno of course his story with the turbine car is radically different as a teenager he went to new york world's fair and saw one of the cars when they were brand new and then here we are all these years later he's actually managed to get his hands on one because those are cars that don't come up for sale very often because most of them are museums the only other private one was in a museum and managed to get out and is privately owned so of all the things i've gotten to do in the car world being able to drive that turbine car was one of the most amazing things ever shopping for insurance can be an absolute nightmare but it doesn't have to be thanks to policy genius they're our sponsor for this month at benwicki and you can visit them at the link in the description below you tell them a little bit about yourself a little bit about your property and they find the best deal by shopping amongst all the major carriers at the same time in fact you can bundle things like homeowners insurance and auto insurance and the average user that bundles both of those things saves about eleven hundred dollars a year so be sure to check them out and thank them for their support of benwiki [Music]

Channel: VINwiki

Views: 324,445

Rating: 4.9506345 out of 5

Keywords: Chrysler, Turbine, Cars, automotive, Jay Leno, Steve Lehto, Headlines, author, book, manuscript, wealth, vinwiki, car stories, vehicle history, turbo, turbine car, turbine engine, rare, museum, unobtanium, exotic cars, test drive, tonight show

Id: D7AYlfsN82c

Length: 8min 35sec (515 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 21 2021