Runge Cars - Jay Leno's Garage

[Music] puppy Allegra I know that guys are bill condon but like the $20,000 sounds we've got a $10,000 sound system right they go episode of J loans garage the cars are featuring today are runge specials if you've never heard of them that's okay because these are purpose-built bespoke cars these are not kit cars then on somebody else's platform these are cars built from the ground up hand hammered all aluminum these cars were built by a guy named Chris Runge he is not some old guy with gray hair like me who's about to die but a young man was actually given our hobby a future because it's good to see younger guys getting into this stuff and the workmanship is incredible it's as good as any of the craftsmanship I've seen on some of the cars done by the old masters let's meet him Chris come on in here my friend very impressive Thank You Jay now we work together before we did an episode of Jalen's garage for the CNBC show that that was a show called rolling sculpture and and that show we just featured more the beauty of a handmade car with today will get a little more the technical side of it obviously you make these bodies yourself on an English wheel in your own shop correct yeah so they're all hand-built from the ground up I don't use any computers with the exception of every once in a while photoshopping roof lines and things like that a lot of drawing and really when I get into a build a lot of it's just done by by eye and by hand as the frame comes to life and fitting a buck to the frame and watching it come alive so it's not a user for once I'd be sort of maybe a little asymmetrical yeah a little bit of that yeah you do sometimes but I mean you know the goal is to make it as symmetrical and as perfect as possible but there's that balance with right I know it's it's ham Billy I've seen all kinds of variety in the 60s built for the Masters and this but that it gives it that imperfection that makes it cool like Cindy Crawford's mole you know kind of go no I like it it adds character absolutely yeah that's the same type of thing this is the one we got to drive on the other show it was pretty impressive we'll drive this one today so tell us what we have here we're not starting with a VW floor pan pan or anything like that girl no so I start with my mild steel tube frame chassis and then depending on what a customer wants these builds are typically commissioned so I really try to their dream car this one we used Porsche be drums we lightened them drill them for cooling and then we have a Porsche 912 engine four-speed transaxle it's pretty racy setup long long gears so it really moves and it kind of has that late 50s Porsche race or fewer yeah now is it way this is 1240 pounds but yeah about 110 115 horsepower if I remember right right in there yeah and really long-legged I mean I found myself I thought it was in 4th gear I was in 3rd gear yeah and and you shall pull well over hundred miles now very nice and the thing I like about it is you didn't make the body and then cover up your imperfections with bondo and then paint it this is yeah I mean there's a well that goes right down here isn't there and you can't see it yeah that's kind of my first two cars I painted and then I thought to myself you know if I'm putting this much work into it and I had to accept the fact that there's you know this artistic factor I've never really considered myself an artist I'm just a car guy right but as an artist I guess I thought well if I leave it raw luminol it'll be able to show the progression of my skills in cars and hopefully in a hundred years people can look at him and say well that's what it was like you know yeah back in the 2000 teens yeah those old guys back then yeah so what you're saying is when you're my age basically all right very good very good so obviously this is now did you look at pictures of actual speedsters or you just kind of yeah this car has influence I mean it has a whole bunch of my favourite cars from the 50s in it it's got some D type Jaguar in the rear right it's got a little bit of RSK in the front and then this kind of barrel side that you know a lot of those those Jags and Porsches had of the era right and then you know all the intake ducts and the aesthetics like louvers and things like that that you see they're all functional I mean they're there for a reason to keep it keep it strong and cool you know so how many pounds of aluminum do you start with how much do you throw away to make a body like this I mean obviously you can't get it right every time for no I'm just wondering so the actual sheet aluminum I years start with five sheets that are 4 by 10 mm the actual weight that's gonna be a little tricky 40 so maybe 200 pounds okay bra yeah maybe like 180 to 220 right in there and of course you know I have bins full of scrap cutouts by the time it's done it all goes to the recycler now you stretched the aluminum also don't you I do yep how do you do that but if you don't understand how you can stretch metal yes it's sort of a pounding process that II yeah yeah so typically when you stretch aluminum you're doing it through hammering or wheeling and that's putting a crowd in the in the metal and when it stretches it gives it that contour that you see the other way to bring in a curve is to shrink it we're actually pushing the aluminum into itself so when you see a clothing that's been pleated they fold it over right right well when metal if you imagine that pleading taking place in metal it's actually pushing it into itself so you don't have a fold the metal is getting thicker right see so it's a really neat way to look at it and you smooth those pleats or those tucks out and it forms a fender I remember when they did the first mirrors I have one of my mirrors is kind of a 127 but up to about car when it was 122 they needed a real thin tab and you got actually if you went like this with your thumb it would actually leave an impression yeah they realize we've got to make these just a little bit heavier yeah this is pretty thick gauge here it is yeah so this cars built out of 60 thousandths which is pretty durable the most vulnerable areas when you look at one of these cars are the flat panels where they could get dented more easily this car is built out of 50,000 so when you look at it you can see more imperfections in it I see yeah because that 50 thousands will wrinkle a little more and it likes to give now here's something that looks like it might be easy but I'm sure it would be impossible for the average person making this door yeah turn this here yep turn it up okay I mean getting this all to fit I I don't even understand what do you make first this part of the door first so when I start with the shaping I have a tube buck and that's basically a guide made out of aluminum tube and the door frames are built out of this tube and the hinges actually functions so I can see how it opens and closes and everything will will basically function before I start putting the skin on it so did you go study at the feet of some of the masters of this or is it a matter of being self-taught you know I have friends of mine they're magicians and they will go and live with these old guys for like a year to just study how they do this disappearing dime trick whatever it might be you know it's the same type of thing I mean what did you have a mentor that helps you as a self-taught oh I'm all completely self-taught Wow yeah so it's just a lot of trial and error my first car I cut the nose off of it gosh probably two or three times before I was happy with it and just kept on learning and and trying to perfect it pretty amazing I love the authentic looking fabric that you have here looks period yeah so that's actually the old tube amplifiers the tweed that they would put on them oh yeah yeah I've always wanted to put that in one of my cars so we thought it'd be kind of cool to put in here oh very cool yeah cool and they're just closes very nicely look at it yep and what motor do you use in this one so this has what started life has a 40 horse Volkswagen engine right but it was modified in the 60s for drag racing and what they used is a package from oak rasa it's a dual port heads and it basically lets twice as much air into that engine Oh crow so was a tuner that built these hot rod packages for VW's so they could essentially compete with Porsches of the same era okay can we open can we open the engine compartment yeah yeah slide there here you can see some of it from here it's mid-engined so it's kind of wedged up in here this panel comes out as well oh wow really is you really can't see much there no but I can open up this other panel too if you want to yeah let's take a look just take me a second here should I open this side yeah can open up that side well you can see the whole motor from there yeah yeah it's pretty much right at your back are you moving enough air in there to cool it yeah it's worked pretty well now being that you know their dual port heads on the VW engines a little different than the Porsche it doesn't quite use as much air but haven't had any problems with it overheating it does real well and this motor is $17.99 CC originally from that forty horse that's a pretty drastic improvement yeah yeah stroker crank Racing cam Corvair pistons and cylinders ah there you go I love this yeah yeah it's pretty neat so what kind of horsepower you think you get it's probably around I'd say that 105 104 power this is a little bit heavier than the RS over here this is 13 54 pounds around there now these are did you make these wheels yeah those are Volkswagens steelies so they're they're smooth early 50s mid 50s style wheel up until 64 or 65 they ran but you drilled them I drilled them out for lightning yeah okay yep very nice and they were a 5 lug yeah the wide 5 similar to this you're gonna look so I am at 5 lug yep 5 by 2 or 5 that's interesting uh-huh and is this your family crest here is it that is the bird is the crest of Frankfurt Germany with my name on it okay so I kind of made it my own okay there's your family from there yeah my family's from near the area of Frankfurt Germany and also Frankfurt was where the original Glock lers were birthed so it has a lot of the rich really early Porsche racing heritage really cool really have the folks from Porsche see these yeah quite a few of them have yeah yeah it's kind of neat to have them look over them with me you know and sure they really enjoy seeing what I've done very very good very good I mean just getting this curve is unbelievable yeah yeah it was a big challenge so this was done in well 1 2 3 5 pieces and again we kind of do it piece by piece it's nice I like to use the rivets kind of the aircraft thing and it really gives you an easy way if you have to read place a big panel you know I can drill these out pull the front clip off put a new one on and what kind of time are we talking about to make a clip like that oh that's probably three to four weeks for me right now okay just the one so a whole car is what you know yeah about a year for the whole car from the ground up and that's every day that's your job yeah that's what a short time yeah okay very cool very cool yeah boy it's just it just beautifully done was just your idea for a Gullwing coupe because as far as I know there never was a portion of gullwing cool yeah so one of the Glock lers had a sort of gold winged or just the top half kind of open that way but yeah I wanted to do this idea of the early Mercedes gullwing I think it's a w 154 he meets Porsche mid-engined and yeah that's what this turned into and what's neat is the sketch that I did have on this I'm not real great at drawing but it's almost identical to finish the car so and the black stripe across the front this is just your aesthetic or is it snow signifying anything what does it come from yeah so the German sports car championships back in the day they would put a stripe across the car to designate the engine size okay which class it raced in oh I say so yeah I have the original pamphlet of what that was so they had royal blue yellow green one is black signified black I think was actually the smallest displacement which this engine doesn't actually that's like a sleeper yeah what we got a sleeper like what are you get a Hemi and put this Lance six thing on us yeah yeah this should be red I think to match this engine okay yeah and the mirrors either did you make these as well no I didn't these are a reproduction radar up on aluminum boy nicely done J just beautiful car thank you Loomis seats you made the seats as well yeah I made the seats wrap them in leather the dash the dash pad the wheel I just I customized that modified it but I have my hand on just about everything and most of it is made in my shop what is the single hardest piece to do when you get to that you go oh boy it's gonna be a all yeah you know the openings for me I guess in my journey of shaping and learning this craft and with the tools that I have to it's real challenge there's the door in the openings getting the the flanges and getting things to fit right it's a challenge so when you hear guys always pick apart fit and finish I totally get it because it is really oh well you're certainly up to the challenge my friend is just it's just beautiful work I'm not sure if people appreciate just how hard this is to do try and shape a piece of metal try and shape a piece of clay see how hard that is see what you wind up with so metal it's it's just unbelievable imagine made your fuel tank as well yeah I did can we open that up and see yeah I grabbed my zeus tool oh okay so the fuel tank is aluminum and then of course we wrapped it in leather just to kind of dress it up a little bit yeah storage that is the slave cylinder Oh for the reservoir okay yep and then the rest of the pedal cluster of course is down underneath now the wiper up and down is that sort of homage to yeah the old LeMans racing day again also functionally it's what worked best with the amount of space that was actually really hard to get that all to fit and to work and the whole thing is hard to get to fit you know it's just unbelievable to me were they using Phillips screws back in the day you know I'm not a hundred percent sure I did have flathead in there and actually my customer preferred to have Phillips so yeah I did change them out but I couldn't answer that for sure yeah I remember they had to fly it because I remember going to something it was an old German guy and he's making sure every flathead screw was turned exactly and he would take him out and put a washer in to get him tight so they were all clocked yeah right across yeah I mean that's that kind of stuff that's funny you know that's that's what makes me laugh about Jimmy I was on the Autobahn one so my wife and I pulled into this village you know and there's a clock from the 11th century there and a church and clock them like the 14th century there and at 12 o clock there wolf one oh the same time you know other countries in the hands are all broken but in Germany it's just very funny that's very funny boys very cool and the seat pans are amazing as well yeah it's really simple but I think it fits kind of the era that we were wanting to to catch with this design and they're pretty comfortable too so is there any heat involved in bending this metal is it all just shaping it with the wheels you know I cold form most of my metal but you can anneal it which brings the hardness aluminum comes with a hardness factor to age 14 h0 so if you anneal it it brings it down to a zero and then it's more pliable easier to form so a lot of guys will you know if they're gonna do this in one piece well you couldn't probably do it in one but larger sections in single panels you do a lot of annealing as you're doing you know you shape it work hardens then you anneal it to bring it back down so I'm guessing this car took longer to make than that one oh yeah yeah yeah much longer yeah that's because of the intricacies of the top mm-hmm and through this whole roof section is a steel tubular roll cage as well that I built that in first with the chassis boy just beautiful I mean your eye falls to so many places there's so many little details throughout this thing that are really fantastic how about this making this a pillar here yeah that was tricky because it's steel underneath and then I had to hand wrap it with aluminum because that's not really a shape that you can just form on right on a machine so yeah it's hand hand wrapped and then welded in place this trick yeah I mean there's so many places the average person just subtle do your eyes go right by because it's so complex you don't even realize it no boy just great just great yeah that's one of the things the guys who own these who buy them from me will text me weeks and months later and they're you know sitting in their garage looking at it and they're like I just noticed this little detail and it's so cool you know it's kind of an ongoing that's really glove afarid and you've got glass in here yes those were tricky to make the outside wasn't too bad but the inside trim it's not identical from one side to the other so I had to hand hammer and weld these in pieces to get him to fit when the windows down you can see up in there or when the shells down yeah did anybody do this in period with so was i always remember even being straight you know like vents of some kind to get the heat out yeah everyone is that your is that your idea 100% sure I when I envisioned this build of my sketches I had it drawn like that you know just stuck sometimes will change things as we go but yeah you know when I'm doing these cutouts I'll lay different shapes on here paper to kind of what it looks like so as I'm laying out the design you know I have this shape in mind but a lot of times we'll lay paper on step back look at it see how it how it lays with the curves because it all comes to life really when you're shaping right in this shape of the windows really stuck with the cooling this parcel tray underneath kind of seals off when you close it so all the cooling is ducted through these all right then you've got these internal tubes coming through that are aluminum I kind of thought those were neat dumping the air down on to the engine because BMW I think in 1938 made a coupe that is similar this kind of looks like the BMW kidney front you know that's what sort of reminded me of the brand and the meal amelia sure a great looking car 328 coupe but didn't have gold wing doors but again the the whole era comes back to me when I look at this he's in Porsche I see some BMW I see but surprising all German yeah I don't see any Engel anything looks English to me here it all looks very very German which is interesting mm-hmm now do you think that's because of your roots or I guess why is this genetic you know yeah yeah it's interesting there's a couple of things when I was a kid I was just drawn to German cars Porsches the 914 you know as a 7 year old I remember seeing it and thinking that could drive backwards and forwards you know and then seeing the 911 so there's that part of it my name Runge the German history of it Ganga is a cart right or a wheeled builder I was on the 13th century so maybe it's in my blood I don't know well it might be I mean I have no idea how those things work but it is yeah it is funny how how that is so the name means wheel right yeah yeah or a cart right yeah don't you love those fasteners they're so great yeah easy yeah it's the greatest thing hold anything down well I think it's time to take a variety you say yeah sounds good very cool all right yeah and the passenger-side is another Lester takes up eating cheese and legroom on your side fasteners got it really nice over here I know that guys are Bill Kosmas but like the $20,000 sounds we've got a $10,000 sound system all right they go really wonderful very first my closet Alvin Toffler inspired that pack accurate can't really take this mistake 4,500 thought the end a short box like 60 miles per hour and you're just coming along I'm telling you they can be look at the letterbox but you got the windshield area that Lamborghini Aventador I always liked the idea of it kind of feeling like a time capsule based upon those yeah yeah so kind of put you back in an era you know one way to all are you running these air-cool thing yeah the oil [Music] I know the old Franklin brother run for their patanè see you know nicest any if I had them golden touch every the car and to get in it and actually make it work well huge challenge but yeah I just I fight so much satisfaction so what's the latest thing you're working on right now of the artist and then I'm working on an entirely new is that r2 is the longer wheelbase modern suspension nine eleven air-cooled engine go write a spec carbon somebody but that respect or whether you're doing that for come on it's commission so I came up with the concept I had a customer talk to me how we could make that design work [Music] gonna be quite machine [Music] [Music] have you started that new bill yet [Music] working with REM the brakes on there ready for the coach guys we have a small girl we talked on the phone but I've never got Raveena come up lily I think it'd be impressed with you that of a customer 1 and paint would you paint them or no yeah I think that would I you know you know a little warmer air the anti-glare fee I would maybe do something my you've been something designed you know if people haven't remember their own designs and you go yeah I get all kinds of questions for different things you know when you're starting up you know like I said earlier I've never considered myself an artist [Music] you do get hungry from time to time like right but you have to stay true to what your passions are that's the reason I started doing this you know put my all my efforts into something that I'm not going to be excited about it I mean there are some great awful cars for 30s the rich people I want this and I want this that when it comes it just looks horrible I know and there's a handful of designers who I mean even the best designers they didn't nail it every time no but like when you look at a given scene like a Coleman zipper one day or even the later Excalibur's the phrase generation Excalibur wasn't bad yeah it looked like an SSK proceed the fenders all of the wheel higher ratio adorable oh yeah and it gets body yeah they're trying to play catch up to come up with the next best thing oh that's stressful aspect of being somebody that builds it I mean it's like coming up with a hit record and you've got to come up with another one and another Oh it's a goal I mean I want to do that I want you know big cars that look right the drive right [Music] as an idea we kind of nailed down an era you era like I know you're big on the history of I love researching we thought what what was broth or what was I'll make the customers story through the bill you know [Music] [Music] that's pretty cool it's fun driving a car you made yourself and that you made yourself very nice and so how do people in touch with you put your give us a website again yeah my website is Runge cars.com okay spell it are you in GE all right very good Chris thank you very much boy to you it's really great to meet young people to doing this kind of work and it's nice to see it goes on it's not gonna be a large start so once again thank you my Frankie so much and we'll see you guys next week hope you enjoyed this [Music]

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 888,999

Rating: 4.9091201 out of 5

Keywords: bespoke, Porsche, aluminum, bare metal, custom cars, gullwing, Runge, FF007, FF006, RS, RS2, air cooled, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, compares cars, classic 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: HxbZVCI-X1k

Length: 30min 10sec (1810 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 11 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/lostboyz]

I watch Jay Leno all the time, but the two cars featured today are just stunning. Definitely worth a watch.

[u/cros13]

i don't know why this hasn't got more views and likes.

I had seen the guys youtube channel when he shows you step by step how he forms a rear fender for one of his cars.

Absolutely amazing talent, especially for self taught.

[u/TheRealGeorgeKaplan]

Now you listen to me, I'm an advertising man, not a red herring. I've got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders that depend upon me, and I don't intend to disappoint them all by getting myself "slightly" killed.

[u/goldman27]

Saw Jason Torchinsky cover this guy on his “Jason Drives” series over at Jalopnik, truly masterpieces of cars.

[u/spotdishotdish]

I think I saw one of these at a local show last summer