Leno and Osborne in Audrain Mansions & Motorcars: Season 1 Episode 2: Seafair

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] i'm in one of the most beautiful cars in america and one of the most beautiful roads in america with one of the most beautiful men in america donald osborne donald tell them where we are and what we're driving today today we're on ocean avenue in newport rhode island and we're driving a 1936 auburn speedster and what a car this is straight eight about 150 150 horsepower and supercharged a supercharged flathead engine it is absolutely amazing and also an art deco icon this is a car that just says 1930s elegance and power to millions of people around the world yeah and the fascinating thing about it is it's all about the style because it's a two-seater car you could have another seat back there if you wanted or you could have a trunk back but there's hardly any room at all so it's all about making a grand entrance and that's what this car is because it's not really a sports car it drives like a sedan but it's big it's comfortable it's powerful and i think on a long trip this would suit you better than perhaps the equivalent bugatti or some of the european exotics just because of just the flat out dependability of a straight eight flathead engine dependable and performance again this is not a sports car however when you realize that what they have achieved at auburn this car was certified by the factory every one of them that came out to do a hundred miles per hour it's got a plaque on the dash signed by their great test engineer and race driver ab jenkins to certify that this car was actually driven at 100.1 miles per hour before delivery so this is uh just a great example of how performance came to the middle of the market in a way that would have been unimaginable a few decades before and you have to put it on in context 100 miles an hour back then was really almost like 200 is now it was only a few vehicles could attain it and most motorcycles topped out at 70 or 80. i mean a true hundred miles an hour was pretty fast even today the the 100 mile per hour figure seems mythical because it's just this this great milestone in the mine uh of course we remember the great performance test that aston martin uh pioneered in the early 60s zero to 100 to zero i mean 100 just has this ring to it you know right right and it doesn't sound the same in kilometers you know no not quite but the uh the other thing which is amazing about uh this auburn and sort of the theme of what it is that we're doing in this segment is the whole idea of 100 miles per hour thinking about the fact that you could buy this car come in off the street and buy a car as a regular driver that would do a hundred miles per hour is an astonishing feat yeah i mean it really was because you realized the speed limit in the 30s was well on main roads probably 40 to 45 miles an hour on most roads 25 to 35 miles an hour so even the phrase mile a minute was a meant a great deal of speed and and when you take something like this up to 60 hey whoa this is starting to get a little a little dicey here you know because you know the funny thing is looking aerodynamic looks so much better than actual aerodynamic and this was art deco and thought to be cutting through the wind but didn't cut to the wind any better than anything else it looks fast and that's what really counts you know again in the design sweepstakes even the words and the wonderful art deco script super dash charged on the side of the hood tell you everything you need to know about this car it just oozes power and elegance at the same time while of course being the mid-priced car in the court empire right and they also made this with a 12-cylinder engine which was quite sophisticated designed by i think auggie dusenberg exactly and it's uh it says something also about el cord's vision for what he thought the american driving public needed in the 1930s that he offered these very advanced front-wheel drive cords offered the auburn that had the power and style of the duesenberg at a reduced price and then for the people that insisted on the absolute best one of the best cars if not the best car in the world at the time the duesenberg model j right right right and this of course was not front wheel drive this traditional transmission in the center rear wheel drive car as far as practicality goes this car is ridiculous there's no roll-up windows you have this silly top that barely well it just looks odd when it's on there's no back seat there's hardly any trunk and that rear deck does not open so it's all it's all about just looking cool and uh and making an entrance and you know something it does that fantastically absolutely the impracticality of this car is actually its great charm this was a car designed during the depression for someone who didn't need to have this car this is a complete toy right right and to have a toy like this indicated that you were somebody of great means and you didn't have to worry about what was happening on the bread lines and i imagine it was also sold as a halo car you came in and daddy let's go see the speedster look supercharged all right son and then you buy the cheap auburn or one of the other cars because this was the bottom rung of the court empire one right exactly and you think about the fact that el cord did a lot of brilliant things in his business life one of the things that i find confusing in the el cord brand ladder is the fact that there's a bit of overlap in terms of the super deluxe um auburns and then the chords and of course the duesenbergs did offer a great deal more in terms of exclusivity build quality and certainly speed 265 horsepower engines and uh but nevertheless as a consumer would it be the choice between the risk of a front-wheel drive cord versus the stability and knowledge of the rear-wheel drive auburn for you you think well you know when you drive a newser when you're driving auburn you can feel the difference i mean the oven had power you know i i don't but the duesenberg was also like a bugatti chiron i think to the average owner it was too complex the average owner could not do much maintenance at home a valve job took 40 hours it took 40 hours to adjust you had eight valves two camshafts i mean it was the height of sophistication and it was only for the most dedicated auto and not particularly quiet you know a packard was oh my god dead quiet so bankers dowagers conservative people they like the packard the duesenberg was a little too flashy for most folks so in the search for more power more reliable power more usable power uh obviously the the auburn engineers turned to supercharging what do you think supercharging does for this straight eight engine well i uh the nice thing about supercharger is unlike a turbocharger you have to wait for it to spool up you have instant power throughout the entire range gives you a little more bottom end torque and let's face a lot of it is marketing i mean the duesenberg had a supercharger but it took 25 it added 50 horsepower or so but it took 25 to drive it so unless you were up in the rev range above 3000 rpm it wasn't that effective it's also interesting in in this car to see uh because it's rare to see in an american car of this age a tachometer yeah well the duesenberg all had tachometers uh yeah yeah the the well not really because that was considered a luxury car you know the idea was this is like aeroplane style don't forget lindbergh had just flown the ocean he flew which was an unheard of feat so everybody wanted airplane style to attract oh airplane style controls you know it has a tachometer just like an airplane so oh so that would you know for kids trying to egg their dad on to buy something can't get the one with the diameter i mean you have to remember the time in which in which uh the car came out and that's why all duesenbergs had an altimeter because lindbergh had flown the ocean and he used an altimeter and they thought wow imagine a car that has an altimeter just like an airplane which is so important of course in indiana where the cars were built because right altitude changes extreme you got as high as six feet above sea level amazing absolutely amazing so uh being here at sea level at the sea is absolutely delightful in the speedster and i think that it's the true environment where this car can be best enjoyed don't you think oh yeah yeah i mean it's the perfect car for here cause next to the mansions around here it fits right in and it really is the key to our theme for this segment which you'll see very shortly okay in fact i'm thinking this car would look great in front of my house indeed come on let's go over to my house see how it looks so here we are at seafair largely considered the last of the great newport cottages yeah this is the last one's bill was built in 1936 the same year as this car that's why this you could have bought this car new and driven up to your home it was exactly and of course seafair uh designed by william mckenzie jr an english architect for vernon reed a denver uh mining heir and also vp of chase manhattan bank someone who was eminently qualified in 1936 to build a house like this and uh it's also quite interesting because as i mentioned before the theme for this segment is 100 miles per hour we have a 100 mile per hour auburn we have 100 mile per hour alfa romeo a 100 mile per hour bruff superior and what does 100 miles per hour have to do with seafarer it's on one of the most extraordinary as you know points of all real estate in newport right absolutely pointing out into the sea and of course we have hurricanes right and the great hurricane of 1938 was a bit of a surprise to mr reed and uh it got this house which was originally named terre mar right the nickname hurricane hut and because it just took the brunt of all the hurricanes it came through here knocked all these windows out the winds were so strong it actually threw a boulder over the house onto the front lawn three people got killed they tried to escape and rolls royces which and of course got flooded out and that so that was pretty crazy uh a peacock there's a bronze peacock out on the back that was on the lawn that got swept out to sea and yet 10 or 15 years later during another hurricane it showed up on the lawn again so there's all kinds of things that happen here it came back home and i think that after all the hurricanes hit it in 1938 in the 1940s again in 1955 the house was renamed seafair right and that was to tell the the gods of the sea that you know it's okay we like you and it's an extraordinary point of land and what is it that drew you to this place well i mean you look at we drove by and you know i think every guy when they get married oh they're going to promise a wife a castle yeah yeah sure sure so we were driving by and i said look at that and i said well let's go see what it looks like let's see what are you doing let's go see if it's for sale we live in california all right so it's almost like uh per chance as we're driving by just as the gate opens and the gardener was coming out so look the gate is opening for us don't go in so i drive in and i ring the bell and briston who was the care taker who's still a caretaker uh he answers i said yes he's oh hi jayla i don't say how are you is this house for sale he goes it is it's not listed i said well can i take a look sure okay i said call me on honey let's buy and she goes what are you talking about and we bought it that's that's why i'm here it is very much a fairy tale castle so the idea of seeing it that way and just having it make that immediate impression upon you is not surprising well you know i live in california and you don't get land like this on the water in california you just don't i mean you do but it's literally hundreds of millions of dollars and you know this was uh well a relative bargain compared to to california and one of the things that also really i think is very attractive and very important about this house is the fact that it's built to the site it's on this wonderful point of land and the house is in a semi-circular shape right it's curved so the wind sort of goes around it yeah it's it's pretty neat it's pretty neat it's a lot of fun and we have deer on the property and rabbits and my wife loves that all kinds of wildlife here you hear the birds chirping and all you know so it's a fantastic place and again it's proof of the fact that life in newport goes on in these great houses new history is being made every day in these houses yeah i guess you could say i'm not sure what history is being made but i've certainly studied history and read it in the house oh sure yeah why not yeah yeah i just finished the grant biography that'd be history so i was reading history in the house yes precisely and it's all it all comes together in a way well coming back to our theme of history and 100 miles per hour let's look at a motorcycle that goes 100 miles per hour now this is one of my favorites i consider this studio one of the most romantic motorcycles of all time and this is a perfect setting for it come on over here [Music] this is a 1929 broof superior although again like cars the year really didn't that didn't really start happening until the 40s and 50s they would build it whenever they sold it they sold it i would say this is the epitome of what a brush superior is supposed to be overhead valves a 100 mile an hour guarantee a thousand cc's about 55 horsepower which was incredible back in the day and this costs as much as a small house this was the dream bike for every boy racer in the 20s this is the one you wanted to have and of course the legend of t.e lawrence lawrence of arabia he had well technically had eight of these he bought seven he put a deposit on the eighth one was killed on one of these before he could pick it up and of course he was just about the most famous man of the 20th century muhammad ali and lawrence of arabia not so much near the end of the 20th century but certainly the beginning lowell thomas had a broadway play about it i mean it was just he was a bit embarrassed by all the fuss he was an intellectual he was a conflicted sort of person he didn't see himself as the adventurer that he is made out to be right right but george brought built these george was a showman he his his father built a motorcycle called the bruff and his son decided to go his dad won better and called it the rough superior and the father thought it was mine the bruff inferior and they had sort of fights about that um he did not make his own motors but he got the best specialist in england jep which uh people call it a engine that's not a slur it stands for j.a presswick and he would tell press work i want your best motor and i want it blueprinted i want it perfect nicely balanced so he got the best components and assembled this bike vincent built his own motorcycle builds on engine but bruff used the best parts available going back for a second to the engine it's also quite interesting that you talked about balance because the jp engines were also used in very small formula cars that a lot of great racers got their start in single seater formula cars powered by the jp engines this you can see it has a hand clutch and a hand shifter which means you've got to take your hand off the handlebars to shift which i like it's there's a lot to do here you've got advanced and recharged ignition here you got your choke here you've got your front brake here which is essentially useless you have a clutch right here and you have an exhaust valve lifter to help you kick it through this has what they call bentley and draper suspension this was the top of the line bike this costs as much as a small house in england at the time so it was not not attainable as they say what did george brook has to do in terms of technology and using technology in order to have to build a motorcycle that could safely go 100 miles per hour in the 1920s well as i said he got the best engine builders and he told them what he wanted and they built the engine to his specifications that was sort of the difference other people use engines with not the same amount of success george was to show me he was a racer himself i think he had 53 races he won 51 of them so he was quite good and quite talented but a bit of a show-off you know they call the rolls-royce of motorcycles because uh the story goes he used to call it the rolls-royce of motorcycles and rolls-royce showed up one day uh he got winded they were coming through had all his men put on white smocks with white gloves and assemble the bikes and rolls royce was so impressed they said all right you can continue using that that phrase you know and that's the kind of guy he was he was a real sort of pt barnum type a bit of bluster in there but he backed it up with performance he built bikes from 1920 to 1940 built about 3 000 bikes quite a few remain and they're among the most valuable motorcycles you can get today and what's this like to ride you know it's a lot of fun to ride if you like the vintage feel the brakes are nothing to write home about in fact you'd go right by your home if you put on the brakes because you couldn't stop in time but the just romantic you've got the little fly screen here you just feel like lawrence ever i mean it's a lot of fun you can go 100 i've been 100 on it and it's it it's it's like we said 100 was like 200 i mean motorcycles did not go 100 miles an hour in the 20s they weren't 45 or 50 miles an hour but really a hundred was really really fast and this was more than capable of doing it well it's an extraordinary thing and of course the secret of motorcycles in terms of performance is all about power to weight ratios right which brings us to our third vehicle the 1939 alfa romeo 60 2500 let's take a look at the alpha wow what a beautiful car this is it is indeed and again going with the incredible beauty of this house is the unbelievable beauty of this 1939 alfa romeo 6c 2500 sport it looks both modern and classical at the same time the front end seems almost reminiscent of a modern car where the back has the sort of vintage classical look to it but beautiful lines it's not a straight line anywhere in this thing absolutely not the metalwork curves on every surface over every dimension and we talked about how the auburn looked aerodynamic this car is actually aerodynamic during this period in italy they were already doing work in wind tunnels of course with scale models and so the touring superleggera uh bodywork on this car is actually optimized for airflow and superleggera cost means actually extra light exactly and it's a system of building the car with stressed tubing over which the aluminum body work is fitted so the aluminum body work is not a stressed part of the body at all it just rests on top incredibly light incredibly strong so you eliminate a lot of flexing and a lot of rattling and speaking of power to weight ratio as we were speaking about with the broth superior the auburn speedster with the supercharger puts out 150 horsepower to get to 100 miles per hour with this alpha in the 60 2500 sport trim puts out 95 horsepower to get to 100 miles per hour and this is the classic victoria giano motor or engine that was the bigger version of this had the twin superchargers on it and the 2.9 correct the 2.9 in both the the uh carbureted and the supercharged versions but basically the same block same architecture for the 60 20 300 60 2500 and then the great 8c and this is truly a modern engine if you looked at this hood you would think oh this is something developed 50s 60s even into the 70s so it's a brilliant thing whereas that's old school flathead easy to work on this is extremely complicated italian it's almost like the back of a watch isn't it exactly a double overhead cam uh straight uh six engine and what's also absolutely amazing about this are the castings we talked a lot about artisans as craftsmen and craftsmen as artisans the pride that the italian designers took in creating these cast pieces the exhaust manifolds and the shaping of the cam covers it's absolutely art in itself yeah and this was in italy a big engine at 2.5 liter where duesenberg do a low overhead cam eight seven liters so it was almost yeah twice as big or it's twice as big so pretty amazing but such a beautiful beautiful car are you ready to take it for a ride we are let's take for a spin and and and show how this car fits into our newport [Music] lifestyle [Music] you just feel this car wants to run doesn't it it does it absolutely does and you can feel how incredibly eager uh the car is in terms of the responsiveness to the throttle the steering wheel yeah i mean your steering is very quick or very light you know although this is only four years later than the auburn technology was moving so incredibly fast and especially in italy i mean alfa romeo has a great reputation even to this day for building sophisticated high performance cars but you have to think about the position that alfa romeo held in the 1920s and in the 1930s this was an extraordinary car they built alpha males in very small numbers they only built 13 of this particular model a typical production year for alpha in the late 1930s would be 130 cars a year right so the cars for the absolute super wealthy uh the most sophisticated uh consumers on both sides of the atlantic uh really appreciate and love these alfa romeos but this thing really wants to be thrown around you can just feel it it's like a dog on a leash that wants to run you know you're just not whereas in the auburn you put your foot in and you're cruising you could probably go 500 miles in a day fine but this thing just wants to run and it makes the the whole idea of the one thing i love about italian cars in general is the fact that every drive turns into an adventure right you know you could be on the mill emilia the target florio and you know it's just a completely different way of thinking whereas the auburn has three speeds because in america well three speeds was better than four because there was one last shift you had to do you know they they used to talk about the torque of the engine you didn't need another gear whereas this the gears is what makes it fun it multiplies the power exactly and thinking about the uh conditions for which this car was ideally built to drive on wonderful twisty mountain roads where you needed to select the exact ratio that you wanted for that moment and also again this is something that you did see as well on american cars at the period but it's also notice that this car also has adjustable shock absorbers right and you can adjust it from inside the car depending on your road conditions and again the whole idea of technology and the march technology in the 1920s and 30s is so wonderful and so apparent well my 32 packers had adjustable shocks from inside the car yeah it's amazing how many foreign manufacturers used american technology delco was used by i think bugatti wasn't it yes he liked it you know and they liked american stuff there's a very funny you can just see this thing just wants to run whereas the auburn's starting to run out of breath about 3000 rpm this is starting to come alive exactly and and you can just see that the owner of a house like seafair who would probably be a sportsman of some sort as well sailing or or or polo and all those things this would be the kind of car that he would would drive the ability to get this kind of performance out of 95 horsepower as well was also i think very impressive this feels like a lot more than 95 horsepower it's astonishing and the nice thing is you can use all the power all the time we're driving along this wonderful seashore which is so incredibly uh typical and and and identifiably uh newport rhode island but in this alfa romeo we could be driving along the adriatic i know along the mediterranean just fits the character of this car so beautifully and of course the thin steering wheel which i love and those gauges are so beautiful feel more tactile yes that's one thing that we do miss i think in the modern cars with these very very small big thick rimmed wheels i don't get it yeah well of course the idea was the big behind the big wheel was before power steering you needed a big wheel to give you that leverage i find them easier to drive i mean for me it's less effort certainly my 356 twin cam got that big wooden steering wheel oh it's great fun yeah it's also a great tribute to the uh the people who built this car at touring uh the quality of this car again as we were talking about the structure of the superleggera bodywork it's a very solid car you know you're in a 1939 car and you feel like you're in a modern unibody car it feels so solid structure this is just the kind of fast two-lane road this car was made for 60 miles an hour and this feels like you're really moving but you're holding the road you've got superior grip uh you've got just wonderful steering you know where the car is at all times and it does feel very light you know yes yeah it's very lively a car like this talks to you all the time you know the the auburn feels like you're wearing a pair of minnesota red wing shoes you know they're strong they're durable and this is like ballet slippers exactly and neither one is better than the other they just they're different they just do different things but but to just have some fun this is this is the car you know a a car like this on the 405 or the 101 freeway we have five six lanes across it it wouldn't feel right you know a a tight two-lane road like this where you got curves and switchbacks 50-60 miles an hour is challenging but a lot of fun you know you feel like you're part of the automobile exactly i've driven cars like this on the autostrata in italy and it's not the experience you want to have at all yeah this however is life itself as far as i'm concerned well the only thing that could be better is if i were behind the wheel right and that will never happen so hey but anyway now the other thing would be better if this was a 2.9 alpha with the twin supercharger ah even simeones once it was a life-changing experience just unbelievable well even here in this experience i think that we've gotten the sense of what 100 miles per hour means in newport rhode island whether it's the hurricane winds at the amazing seafair or in the auburn speedster or the bruff ss 100 or this alpha 60 2500 100 miles per hour and newport are made for each other that's right and their place is not the only person's not made for the police so don't even try it okay because well let's just say we've been there [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Audrain Museum Network

Views: 140,885

Rating: 4.9414167 out of 5

Keywords: Jay Leno, Donald Osborne, Jay Leno's Garage, Audrain Automobile Museum, Newport Car Museum, Jay Leno and Donald Osborne, Auburn Speedster, Brough Superior SS100, Alfa Romeo 6C Touring Superleggera, Seafair, Seafair Newport RI, Seafair newport Rhode Island, Jay Leno's House Newport RI

Id: 88Bm_1vvlqU

Length: 29min 57sec (1797 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 17 2020