Johnny Carson’s 1939 Chrysler Royal - Jay Leno’s Garage

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He asked Johnny if he would put David Letterman in the trunk but NBC just gave Jay his job instead.

👍︎︎ 6 👤︎︎ u/Rubywantsin 📅︎︎ Jul 20 2020 🗫︎ replies

Johnny Carson lost his virginity in that car. He showed that car on an autobiographical documentary he did, but he didn't mention that fact.

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/larrymoencurly 📅︎︎ Jul 23 2020 🗫︎ replies
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[Music] that's a horn that sounds like a heart another stupid little beep that's a that's a mandolin there you go it's a chrysler and you might be surprised to learn who owned this car he was quite famous at least here in america uh one of the most famous people it's uh it's pretty cool welcome to the episode of jay leno's garage pandemic edition we're still under this uh covert 19 thing so we're doing this about as uh loose as you possibly can and we i like to call these pandemic kind of cars because these are the kind of cars most people have in their garage most people have in their barn you know we always see these things where a farmer's got a uh bird cage maserati or a ferrari enzo or something in his barn i see this all the time and the average farmer makes a little under 50 grand a year how they can have bird cage maserati and enzo ferraris and rolls royces and bentleys in their barn i have no idea this is more like something you would find in a barn and this did come out of nebraska this car it's a 1939 chrysler royal this was the workhorse of the chrysler fleet six-cylinder engine 4.1 liter that's about 250 cubic inch about 114 horsepower you know when i was a teenager this was a 25 year old car and this is what you got for a couple of hundred bucks something like this and you took it home and you took the muffler off put a glass pack on it and they're just almost unbreakable this car sat for well over 20 years poured some gas in the carburetor cranked it third revolution boom it fired i mean these old chrysler flatheads literally bulletproof engines they'll just run forever and ever and ever and uh just bring back a lot of memories for people of a certain age group but this one actually has a lot of memories because this one has i guess you'd call it celebrity providence if i was an auctioneer that's what they always say you know provenance belonged to somebody famous because this car was bought new by johnny carson's dad now for those of you watching outside the united states johnny carson was probably the biggest most popular greatest late night talk show host in america for over 30 years he was number one and they threw everything against the movies of the week other talk show hosts nobody could beat him and back in 1982 nbc did a special call johnny goes home johnny came from nebraska it's a lovely countryside isn't it i simply call it home they went back to his hometown and they found out that the producers found out oh johnny's dad had this 39 chrysler and then pictures of johnny driving this car to his high school prom you know old you know it's kind of that old eight millimeter stuff and also johnny age 12 polishing and washing this car for his father so they thought let's try and find a 1939 chrysler royale to recreate for johnny will surprise him well they went back to johnny's hometown and like most small towns i grew up in one things don't change a whole lot not only did they find a 39 chrysler rail they found the exact one owned by johnny's dad and they found the guy whose johnny got sold to and they bought it as a surprise gift to johnny and johnny drove this around nebraska and it was a great special i'm sure bits and pieces of it are on youtube right now and uh you know johnny with his old high school teacher i mean uh grammar school teachers and you know just going around the neighborhood and it was it was a great special a lot of fun it was a huge hit people really liked it uh but johnny really had no place to put this the network bought it for him as a gift and he had it at his house for a while but you know johnny's really busy and things sit and batteries go dead whatnot he called me he said what should we do with this car and i said well my friend richie klein at the imperial palace i got this great museum let me call him maybe they'd like to do it and put up a display you know johnny carson's car the whole deal and you go that's a great idea so he gave it to them unbeknownst to me johnny had included a letter to richie and everybody the imperial palace saying when you're done with the exhibit give the car to leno i want him to have it uh when johnny passed away a few months went by and i was shocked that like richie called me and said johnny wants you to have the car and i was so touched by that we got it and we brought it back here and it needed a bit of work not a whole lot it was it was restored somewhere along the line not professionally just nicely restored the dash still needs to be done we had to replace the exhaust system put a stainless steel exhaust system on it a new gas tank a few things like that did the brakes did the wheel cylinders you know all the maintenance that you would normally do on an old car but just the fact that it was johnny carson's gave it sort of a special meaning to me and i really enjoy having it here in fact we have some of the actual display from the imperial palace we've got johnny's desk the microphone and there are a lot more pictures on the wall around the car here come on over here i'll show you this is the actual desk johnny sat behind this is his microphone and they had a few pictures there's johnny there and of course some story of the car this desk seems so small now you know when i was uh 12 13 years old watching johnny carson on tv i thought there's some enormous giant desk and it's not it's just a it's not really even a desk it's just some plywood nail together you know it's show business but uh obviously a lot of people sat right there next to johnny with this staff so it's kind of cool to have it here at the garage but come on let's get back to the car and learn some more about that you know it's funny when i was a kid i remember seeing footage of some of the first lamborghini mirrors that were in the country and that was about 66 which means there's still plenty of these cars on the road i remember seeing a lamborghini miura past i know it was a royale but a chrysler like this and that was way up here in the lamborghini's way down here and it just showed you the difference between the old and the new what uh what a couple of decades can can what a difference it can make something i always hated about these cars was this you opened the hood and to get in the engine is literally way down there in the basement you literally have to hang over the car you're on the fender i mean just to reach anything you're way down here it's just crazy and i always hate it because to me i always loved cars in the uh early 30s late 20s because you'd open the hood and the engine was right there then they started burying the engine way down and it's really not much of an engine wonderfully reliable i mean six cylinder as i said oil filters way down there you know i hate it because you always had to get a fender cover and you always scratch the fender i had a guy make me something that was really neat for the duesenbergs he welded it together so you literally hang you slide up and you hang over the car so you can reach down and that makes it a tremendous advantage but yeah these are these are interesting and you know you could buy these when i was a kid for a couple of hundred dollars and they're still not expensive i would say one of these in this condition not being johnny carson's of course would probably run you eight to eleven thousand dollars something like that how does this go okay and then you were down there had drum breaks all the way around uh this one has the optional radio which was a huge deal back in the day uh these things are all like two dollars for the mirror that kind of stuff uh this upholstery brings back a lot of memories because it just has that wet dog smell you know it's kind of a although this is not mohair it's fabric and it does have that sort of old car smell that you uh you associate with these vehicles got the suicide doors i believe this car was about eight hundred and fifteen dollars brand new which uh of course today's money seems crazy but that probably would have been the equivalent of fifteen thousand dollars maybe something like that i think that's fair to say this is what they used to call a full-size automobile and it's a full-size car you could carry six people in this thing three in the front three in the back nice big trunk you got this other window back here this was uh i guess this would be the mid-price field they used to call it they always had fields you had the low price field the mid price field and the high price feel the luxury feel and they are why they call it a field but they do and this would be sort of mid-priced i guess uh cadillac's duesenbergs those kind of cars were thousands of dollars these were hundreds of dollars buy a supply tires dead reliable they always had huge heaters amazing heaters because this car johnny's dad bought it in nebraska and drove it in the snowstorms and everything else i remember when i was a kid pushing guys out of snowdrifts with these things and they buying for a few hundred bucks and then go sliding around you go to a you know supermarket parking lot on a saturday morning after a big snowstorm or sunday morning when they were closed and just slide around the parking lot until you hit something and then the cops would come and they'd call your dad and that's the way it worked yeah okay here's the dashboard of the car pretty comprehensive you got your starter button here this is a headlights panel lights this is your wiper and a hand throttle right here you have your uh gauges you got oil pressure amperage fuel temperature and of course your speedometer right here radio uh this is pretty cool this is an overdrive unit at above 25 or 30 miles an hour you lift your foot off it drops down a gear and you get an overdrive it becomes more or less a four speed big giant heater under the dashboard there those things will blow you out of the car bob and marilyn means i guess this is who nbc bought it from they owned it from 78 to 81. uh they didn't quite finish the restoration here this dashboard could have done a little bit nicer but that's okay a beautiful interior here this kind of fabric look how high the roof is and what is this here i guess you'd write in there when you when you change your list though you got a beautiful ornate door handles switches i mean this is a a really well-built nice automobile and these things always just turn the key it's been sitting here wow just hit the button they start right up you know flat heads were great i mean that was the they didn't leak oil they were easy to work on you know any gasket you could take the head off decarbonize it de-coat the head for you put it back on no problem stick a head gasket on there you know if you broke a timing chain you didn't bend all the valves like nowadays i mean it's pretty cool glove compartment there and across your radio and your preset buttons come on let's take a look at the back seat okay here i am in the back seat of the car as you can see there's all kinds of room that seat is all the way back you've got a grab rail here where you can hold on to stuff you've got foot rest this was the quintessential family car this was the car for the guy hadn't quite made it to the top was about halfway there you know this is what you bought easy to work on easy to service reliable i mean they're very very good i mean these cars really did not break down very often and when they did clem at the shell station could fix it you know no problem there wasn't anything too serious that ever went wrong with these things 114 horse that was more than respectable for a car this size i don't know what this weighs probably 3 600 pounds you'd think it'd be heavier but don't forget you don't have any door guard beams you don't you don't have any safety stuff on it you know so that those things weigh a lot you've got these straps you know my mother's always impressed by the upholstery i remember my dad bought a 73 buick electromagnet i love the brocade upholstery it's kind of broken it looked like elvis presley's coffin inside that car and hilarious hilarious as you can see you've got this simulated wood grain it's painted on metal there to give it that look hey what do you want for 815 it's a pretty good deal and the trunk is huge too come on let's take a look at the truck okay here we are at the rear of the vehicle you know i i love the cathedral type windows here the split window at the back a nice little art deco touches here on the tail lights the chrome i love the green paint you know all cars now seem to be either matte black white or silver and just to have these kind of colorful colors is i think really neat and it really makes the cars and you've got your big trunk here okay not the easiest you kind of have to do this but it's a good size trunk as you can see now this this should slam on my head and knock me out in a minute or two and there's a bunch of stuff in here too in the trunk uh this is your crank to jack up the car got a full-size spare somebody put some kind of modern shag carpeting or something in there but that's the trunk come on let's uh let's take this thing for a ride i just like how much room there is [Music] when i was in high school this is what your dad usually bought you for a first car when you're a kid something like this for maybe 50 to 150 bucks 200 bucks and it was simple to work on you know it was kind of fun you got to take the whole car apart put it back together and you really literally could on this thing just with basic tools ignition system was pretty simple points plugs condenser you know kate could do his own tune up and feel pretty cool about it like oh wow i turned up my car look at that [Music] i mentioned this before but i love these big giant steering wheels and that's what people did before power steering giant wheel i saw those photos of johnny taking this car with his promise that makes me laugh every time i mean it's interesting when you're a kid you idolize somebody somebody you think you'd never meet and then uh oh you meet them and then you become friends with them and then johnny gave me some good advice when i was a kid he came in to see me at the improv the comedy club and i was doing stand-up write your jokes down get on stage and tell them as boring and as dull as you possibly can just just read them with no inflection if it gets a laugh okay then you know you got a funny joke then go back and perform that joke with a lot of gestures and physicality whatever because then the joke always works on two levels it works because hey it's funny and b because you do in a funny way and uh that was the best advice he ever gave me i thought that was terrific worked out pretty good this engine was chrysler's mainstay from about 1937 to about the 50 51 52 just a good old reliable motor [Music] speed limit i believe when this car came out was about 45 miles an hour something like that an old guy told my story once how they came up with the national speed limit old guy probably younger than i am now when he told me this but seemed like a really old guy and he said when they built the highway system in the 50s they would take ordinary citizens out in a car like this they'd throw a towel or a blanket over the speedometer get on the freeway and say to people tell me when you think we're going too fast and about 65 to 70 most people when that feels about right and i'm pressing almost 65 all right and allegedly that's how they came up with the national speed run because what most people felt was you know it's like when you drive a modern car now you can go 100 and it feels like 60 miles an hour but most of those things were done with these type of cars how much truth there is to that if i get it wrong let me know in the comments section and i'm sure you'll let me know oh people let me know oh and then people i always get picked up for leaving my blinker on well the reason i need to blink about it because he'd hold the cars they didn't have a you know a noise he didn't have the clicking sound uh a lot of them didn't even have a light on the dashboard so you forgot it was on [Music] it doesn't look like any other car you can buy now it's the most unintimidating car looks like a big friendly dog and it's just very nice this is what we used to call three on the tree in terms of i i'm sure young people don't even know what that expression means with the bias quiet tires oh my god you know when the exit said exit speed 35 if you're going 36 i think it's like this screeching and screaming that's a horn that sounds like a horn another stupid little beep that's a that's a mantling of horn there you go it's a chrysler you know tv has gotten so polluted over the last few years in the sense that there are so many channels so many things to watch it's almost hard to give me how big a star johnny carson won just huge i mean you can get ratings of 25 30 million people watching and nowadays you can watch netflix you can do whatever you want anytime on demand but back then you had three or four choices and johnny was the number one choice with most people and uh consequently he became fabulously wealthy and uh hugely successful it's funny i could never bring myself about johnny i was calling mr carson you you me johnny okay uh johnny you know i grew up in new england yeah you know when i came to california i had a friend this is my mom agnes and my dad bob how you missing mr japan or whatever it is i could call it bob and agnes i'm sorry i guess just not not to worry about it thank you mr carson without calling me mr carson all right i'm trying to make this more about show business and [Music] it's just kind of cool to happen i take care of it and i cherish it and most of all i drive it thanks johnny hey see you guys next week [Music] uh
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Views: 573,804
Rating: 4.9496565 out of 5
Keywords: Johnny Carson, Late Night, Chrysler, MOPAR, Royal, King of Late Night, legacy, rare cars, Johnny Goes Home, Jeff Sotzing, Jay Lenos Garage, car porn, motonerd, classic cars, gear head, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, compares cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, car gear, McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, Camaro Z28, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, episode, motorcycle, ford, corvette, tour, dodge, lexus
Id: tz5cJNpIso8
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 22min 29sec (1349 seconds)
Published: Sun Jul 19 2020
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