Leno and Osborne in Audrain Mansions & Motorcars: Season 1 FINALE - Episode 6: Marble House

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] how amazing is this the car i'm driving right now 1907 renault french racing car and it's back home again tell them why it's home again donald j we're driving down bellevue avenue in newport rhode island where willie k vanderbilt lived and the one who ordered these cars new from renault in 1907 for himself and his friends to go racing and so we're bringing this car back to the house he moved into as a teenager in 1892 and so this will be an amazing homecoming for this astonishing car i mean everybody knows the name vanderville from as being wealth and privilege but they might not know that willie k was one of the leading lights of american auto racing i mean he really started it started almost on this street didn't it exactly jay it's a very funny thing because willie k vanderbilt was many things and he could have just been a totally idle playboy he was born incredibly rich the third generation of wealth in the vanderbilt family but he had a passion for sailing and for cars well that would be idle cost and sailing is about as idle ridge as you can get but that's okay because we're car people exactly he's an absolute hero he had he had a day job he was a vice president at the new york central railroad so he had to go into the office every now and then right but as soon as he was out of the office he came to drive cars and he wanted to also get all his friends involved with cars that's the legacy that willy kay really left is the fact that he brought motor racing to the public now this car is 1907. now it might look primitive to you but this is a very advanced racing car don't forget the average human never probably went more than 10 12 15 miles an hour in his life maybe hi guys maybe on a fast horse this was capable of what 70 80 miles an hour 70 miles per hour in 1907 and when you think about the fact that from the time cars were invented engineers did their level best to make them go faster and faster but nobody really thought about stopping a car until the mid late 50s right so it's really something that you have a car with this kind of power i mean this would be the equivalent of getting a koenigsegg regular or maybe even a bugatti chiron i mean this was about pretty much the fastest car in the world certainly the fastest car a regular person could buy isn't it absolutely and it's a really terrific thing that willie k had the vision that auto racing fast cars could be something to be very very popular not only among his set of friends the very wealthy uh people who first automobile enthusiast but also for the general public so he actually organized the first closed circuit race in the u.s in cranston rhode island and then started his vanderbilt cup race here in newport rhode island in the old aquidnic uh race horse race club and it's it's almost hard to believe how advanced this car is this car had you know the most old cars certainly up until the early 20s she had to advance and the ignition this had automatic uh automatic timing you i guess you'd call it had a four-speed transmission with the most complicated gearbox it's sequential here but in the gearbox itself it's an h-pattern so the number of forks it's like watching a watch opening the back of a watch and watching it all move it's amazing how sophisticated this car is the only primitive thing would be probably the suspension and i guess the brakes but engineering wise look at these little oilers up here that distribute oil throughout the engine and this is a 100 original car this is the actual car willie drove not one like the actual car and we're going to his actual house now aren't we we are we're going to marble house one of the great treasures of newport one of the great newport cottages today it's owned by the preservation society of newport that brings that keeps these houses open and supports them so that generations after can come and appreciate them and to bring this car back home is something absolutely special that no one else has the opportunity to do and what's really amazing is i just got in this car today and drove it no lesson no nothing because it's it's quite modern obviously the brakes are not modern at all certainly i'm shifting into high gear now and it's got just stump pulling torque it just full but in fact we could drive around newport all day and look at houses and and go to lunch and you could use this as a regular car exactly as i'm sure uh willie did uh to both amaze his friends and to probably horrify some of the neighbors well this is my favorite era when you could buy a racing car and drive it on the street and here we are at marvel house you've come back home [Music] marble house takes its name not only from the soft gray tuckahoe marble from new york state used for its exterior facades but also for the extensive use of italian yellow sienna and pink numidian marble among others inside its completion marked the confirmation of the turn of architectural style in newport from the wood and shingle style to that of stone from casual vacation to opulent entertaining richard morris hunt the first american to be admitted to the architecture course at the eccol de bozart in paris brought authentically expressed french style to this commission typical of the bozart's type the house is modeled on neoclassical elements which came into favor in france of the 17th and 18th century in a clever use of sleight of hand and scale what appears to be a two-story building in fact has four levels it appears imposing but not overwhelming in addition to the vanderbilt family it was home to a staff of 36 servants the interiors by jules allard of paris are as lavish in decoration as the exterior is relatively restrained much like its french inspiration it truly reveals itself once you are past the doors it was reported in the press at the time that the cost of building marble house was 11 million dollars roughly 300 million dollars today of which well over half was the cost of the half million cubic feet of marble william k vanderbilt was the grandson of commodore connelly's vanderbilt who built a fortune on shipping and railroads william's older brother cornelius vanderbilt ii built the breakers nearby his son willie k enjoyed racing yachts as did his america's cup winning brother harold but automobiles were his true passion and by the time he moved into marble house with his parents he was already smitten by the bug their sister consuelo was a noted beauty who married the ninth duke of marlborough in the union that brought a title to the vanderbilt and financial salvation to the marlboroughs their mother alva vanderbilt was a leading social figure in new york and newport and her force of personality and style made her a leader in that society william k built marble house for alva and in fact in a time when many women did not hold property gifted the new house to her in 1892 apparently it wasn't enough to save their marriage and alva divorced him in 1895 to marry a good friend of her husband's oliver belmont the following year she moved a few blocks down bellevue avenue to belcourt castle and for a time closed marble house after belmont's death in 1908 she reopened marble house and it would become not only a social but political center a dedicated suffragette alva made marble house the home of two major conferences to advance the cause of the right of women to vote and her prominence and this commanding setting certainly gave great visibility to her work after she relocated to france in 1919 marble house would be closed until she sold it to frederick h prince in 1932 the newport preservation society acquired the home from the princess state in 1963 through a donation of harold vanderbilt and marble house one of the most iconic of the newport cottages and on the national register of historic places since 1971 was designated a national historic landmark in 2006. today the newport preservation society hosts thousands of visitors from around the world to this remarkable showplace imagine in 1907 driving this around i mean first of all there were hardly any the model t was still over a year and a half away absolutely so most people had never even seen a car seen an automobile as opposed to riding in one and to see something like this coming at you at 50 or 60 miles i mean it was you know what used to happen they used to have something called city to city races in europe where they'd literally race on a public road and they stopped them because people would go out on the road and look to see the car coming and they'd have no idea and literally get mowed down because they couldn't get out of the way fast enough you know what they're used to seeing a horse galloping okay well i can stay here for a minute or two you know no you can't you know and so many people were killed that they banned the city to city races it literally must have been like watching a spaceship land in your in your town to see a vehicle like this in 1907 and and also thinking about what newport represented the fact that newport was filled with people who had both the money and the imagination to really pursue their dreams and they helped to build the automobile industry you know there's a great scene in the movie the wild bunch remember that it's a western and it's about the end of the old west and a bunch of cowboys are sitting in a saloon in a flat desert-like environment and a car goes by and they go they have no idea how the there's no horse pulling i mean and it just when you see that scene you realize wow there their era is over and this was really the dawn of american ray well world racing world racing absolutely this car was built in france you know germany was the birthplace of the car but they say france was the nursery france is where all the sophisticated engineering came from especially early on and this is a classic example of one of the greatest race cars of all time [Music] it's inspired by the petit trianal at versailles i thought those are those little finger cookies no no no those are the larger ones that come in the big ten but uh but you know france fascinated the upper class in the us and for a good reason first of all obviously architecture design the classical designs that were typical of french architecture are known the bozart school right and here in this car also the french really were pioneers in technology at the time and willie kaye who ordered this car was fascinated by french cars his very first car which he bought at 20 was an 1898 didion bhuton tricycle well it's interesting to me how so many conventions like now we just assume the radiator goes in the front because they have been here the radiator is behind the engine and you'd think it would be picking up the heat from the motor why do it's not is not aerodynamic so this looks aerodynamic but they do actually the renaults uh pioneered this and they had it in all their cars up to world war one and actually it also gives better balance for the car as well right much like the uh sort of a mid a front mid engine car the weight balance is absolutely in the center of the vehicle which makes it much better to handle right and also you do get a low frontal area which is important now i don't think they realized how important it was but it had that extra added benefit as well as not having all the weight uh pointed over the front wheels like i i think if you didn't know you might mistake this for an american franklin franklin was air-cooled but it had this same sort of hood treatment exactly to uh to let everybody know that yes indeed we are going to cool your engine even though you don't see that formidable radiator let's take a look in the hood yeah we'll do that okay you've got your felt there builds here and you gotta do that yeah there you go perfect well i hate to do this on a windy day but well it's a nice clean piece of engineering here's your magneto right here uh it's your crank to start it there's no electric starter that was invented until 1911. is it an l hat i guess it is it's an l head uh inline four so it's intake over exhaust exactly right okay and this opens up there's a tool you can get right in there and see the piston and you can also decarbonize it and clean it out which is a very necessary activity right in the time and these these are priming cups you in cold weather you put a little gas in here you open that that would send the gas directly into the cylinder so when the spark came there'd be fuel right there right away because really be cranking a seven and a half liter motor yeah although this car starts amazingly easily yeah for its time as well i think a tribute to the uh the balance and the engineering of this car and just the way every piece you can tell as as we go from sort of the the blacksmith age into the automobile age there's still a pride in workmanship in the way each of the the components is formed the castings and and the finishes are just absolutely amazing yeah that's the amazing thing because this is still the error of the craftsman the craftsman was gone by the time assembly lines came in the idea was craftsmans were finicky they were artists they were expensive to hire and they were slow you know when henry ford designed the model t he made sure every part fit perfectly so he didn't need craftsman he could just have guys boom just slam apart and put your hood down slam it apart so you could turn on 100 cars an hour something like this probably took two weeks to build at a fact minimum two weeks to build at a factory but just beautiful just beautiful willy kay was also someone who really helped the automobile industry and in this case renault to really make their market in the u.s because he saw the 1906 renault grand prix cars and their great success and said gee not only do i want one of those but set to the renault factory i can sell 10 of those so you can build 10 similar cars for me to sell to my friends right and he did much like max hoffman did with mercedes and the gullwing right and so the idea that that he was such a successful salesman because it was his passion he could get his friends to say i have so much fun doing this you can too and we can break we can bring you a car that will give you amazing performance now this particular car of course was never raced and when you think about that to have this kind of performance in a street car is it astonishing yeah it'd be like getting uh the gt-4 gt that won them all and driving it on the street i mean it's basically what it was but the fascinating thing about this is if you found one of these in a barn 100 years from now and you found a brand new 2020 car in a barn this would be easier to get running absolutely because everything is self-sufficient there's no real well there's wires to the ignition but this is your whole electrical system this right here you spin that you don't need a battery you don't need a source of electricity this makes its own electricity you spin that it gets a spark and you go i mean it's fascinating it's really interesting you put a little gas in here you spin that and it starts this could sit for 100 years and fire in a second modern cars you need a computer you need all those other stuff to assist you so it's kind of an interesting thing and so a small wonder that though very few of these cars survive it's believed that four of them survived this is largely acknowledged as the most original of those cars it's never been restored it's been painted right um but it's got all of its original components engine gearbox rear axle wheels this is absolutely astonishing as it was delivered in 1907. and whoever took care of it in the day did it properly they must have drained the radiator because that's the original radiator normally of radio suits with water in it the water will eventually just eat it and tear it apart whereas this still has the original radiator this car has been in some of the greatest collections in history george waterman found this guy he's one of the pioneer car collectors sold it to james melton a great opera singer and also a pioneer car collector who had his autorama museum in long island and later in florida and then it went to bill speer the great driver for brix cunningham it was exhibited for a while in the bricks cunningham museum and then it went to the indianapolis motor speedway museum right where it lived for decades until being sold to private ownership and then uh here to the drain collection that's right now the adrena museum is here in newport which is great because this is a piece of newport history and we've just drove it on the exact same street that willie k drove on with the same street lamps i mean that's what's fun about you know in california things last 20 years and they tear it down you come back east in this history here you know that's really exciting and living history right we get to drive willy kay's car up to his house and that can't be duplicated anywhere else unfortunately it's very windy here in newport i'm afraid this is going to turn into us yeah we are by the sea after a sail here we go let's put this back down and shut this hood watching our fingers let's take a look at some other new part a really interesting one over here jay [Music] and of course although we associate newport with the vanderbilts the vanderbilts were a big family sort of keeping up with all the vanderbilt variations it's sort of like a porsche 911s like the 962 and the 964 and right it's astonishing um this marble house was william k vanderbilt's house right his cousin however cornelius vanderbilt built the breakers and this is a car this 1941 cadillac series 75 fleetwood limousine was built for gladys vanderbilt later countess zapari right who was one of cornelius's children and so this is also a car which has lived its entire life in newport in fact this car was stored in the barn of the breakers for more than 60 years and came out there's actually a fire in the barn which did a little bit of damage to the car which has never been restored that's what i thought a little bit of scorching on the hood here yeah exactly i have to admit these were never pretty cars to me this 1941 was an odd 4 39 40. i liked the earlier 30s cars or even the 50s for about landishness these just seemed sort of booty and bulky they didn't have the 16 cylinder engine anymore it was a v8 certainly more efficient and probably easier to drive but they don't seem as pretty to me but i know a lot of people go crazy for 41s it's true and again because it's a cadillac but a lot of people also who are great gm enthusiasts or just car enthusiasts in general think the 1939 40 and 41 buicks were really sort of the epitome of gm design and and engineering achievement at the time nonetheless it's a cadillac and especially to see a car like this that has been preserved is also a wonderful thing again as we just brought the the renault back to newport this car has lived all of his life in newport and now in the collection of the ardrain gets to celebrate the newport history even further apparently this car was used for gladys's wedding as the count of safari and it actually has not covered more than 10 or 12 miles since that wedding wow now what happened is this from the heat that cracked the glass or what is that it's from the heat exactly it's from the heat and you can see also on part of the roof on the other side you can see where some of the paint is slightly bubbled oh that's insane it's absolutely astonishing but again it's one of those things about the way the car shows its life if this car could be completely restored but then it wouldn't be the car that sat in the breaker's barn right from the time of uh the wedding and it's a v8 about what a hundred and that's a 5.7 liter uh v8 engine um again these cars were not known for their sparkling performance right but they were smooth not as smooth as the contemporary packards of the time right um to your point after the great cylinder wars of the 1930s where cadillac really reigned supreme with their with their v16 i mean that's a really amazing amazing car but it's um it is a slight step backwards but nonetheless it still is something quite extraordinary to see when you look at the features of this car and just the the sheer luxury of the car i mean this back seat is larger than many urban apartments and this truly is the accommodation for a vanderbilt now a lot of people know anderson cooper the famous cnn uh newsman he is a vanderbilt he's a vanderbilt and from this part of the vanderbilt family and he actually i guess he lived in the house his mother lived there and i guess he grew up there part of the time he grew up there part of the time there was an apartment at the top of the breakers that was reserved to the vanderbilt family until quite recently right the preservation society is doing some work in the house and so they no longer use that apartment but it is again the fact that these houses have a living history and that's what's so important about what's happening here in newport and of course the famous cadillac everybody had a hood ornament back in the day preferably something with wings and yeah yeah exactly something that made you think of speed and and and flight right right when the car was standing still right so it's an astonishing thing and uh our next stop on the newport vanderbilt look is to imagine what willie kaye might have driven if he was around now you know i'm i was interested when i saw the car we're going to look at in just a minute i was fine this doesn't fit in here it doesn't seem like part of it but when you explain it like that this is what really k would drive now then it makes perfect sense come on let's take a look absolutely [Music] well it does seem funny to see this car here but this is probably what willie k would drive isn't it absolutely this is a porsche gt2 rs club sport and this is a a porsche customer race car right for a special series that porsche customers can drive in and it's exactly the kind of thing that willy kay if he was around today we get together a bunch of his friends and say let's buy this race car and just go and have fun is it street legal this is not street legal as opposed to the renault right um but nonetheless it still is a race car that is actually tractable enough to drive on the right right which is my favorite kind of race i mean i love the days when you could drive a race car to le mall race it and then drive it home which jaguar did back in the 50s they actually drove the race cars to the track and then modifications and do it and then drove i mean it's amazing and even even um when they arrived at the track typically they didn't have the big paddock facilities that you see today in the tracks they rented local garages and they would drive their race cars from the local garage to the track with all the kids in the street cheering them on and all that's why f1 is not that interesting to me because it's like space flight it's so above an airplane technically and scientifically and every other kind of thing and expense wise that it's sort of out of the realm the idea that you have a street car you can actually race to me that's the most exciting era wow and the fact that this looks like although it shares very few parts with it looks like a 911 that you can see driving down the street every day well it is a 911 i mean you could i suppose you could get this body work put it on your 911 and convince people it's a club swipe you wouldn't have the 700 horsepower and and the over 500 foot-pounds of torque that this puts out well look how light this door is i mean incredibly lightweight it doesn't weigh anything it's just a aluminum fiber it's carbon fiber carbon fiber carbon fiber yeah carbon fiber yeah and carbon fiber is used throughout the car you can see obviously in the hood panel the roof panel where it's unpainted and it's just sealed for both the look and for the fact that it's an important structural part of this car you got the fire suppression system right here you hit that button it just floods the cabin with you know uh flame retardant whatever it is i don't know what it is but it puts the fire what's the fire yeah exactly but you know you can just imagine the excitement that the sort of everyday driver could get driving one of these cars obviously you have to take lots of lessons in order to learn to drive this car well and fast right as as is offered by porsche but it is that whole idea of putting customers into race cars right just as renault did back in 1907 and it's quite interesting that you can still do this today in a way that is approachable right and uh it's it's an interesting thing to think about what willie k did and the performance of that renault uh as compared to contemporary cars this is a 700 horsepower uh racing porsche but they're a thousand horsepower and 1200 horsepower street cars right so the race cars are not so much about pure power today it's about the combination of power weight yeah uh handling uh air management thinnings that there were no engineers didn't couldn't even comprehend right right but it's fair to say compared to what was around it's a pretty good comparison that was the race car fastest car of the day this is one of the fastest cars of today exactly so we took a ride in the renault uh shall we take a ride in this one uh yeah it's only got one seat though you know something i'm gonna give you my uber they'll be by let me get out in the street i will make the call and uh we'll we'll uh we'll have him come get you what about me [Music] unbelievable there he goes willie k leno [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] how do we get in this thing is that seat even back all the way

Channel: Audrain Museum Network

Views: 88,268

Keywords: Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, Audrain, Audrain Automobile Museum, Audrain Museum, Mansions & Motorcars, Donald Osborne, Assess and Caress with Donald Osborne

Id: -5716xnR8xo

Length: 28min 16sec (1696 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 26 2021