{"id":2665,"date":"2014-06-23T12:44:06","date_gmt":"2014-06-23T19:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.costulessdirect.com\/?p=2665"},"modified":"2014-06-23T12:44:06","modified_gmt":"2014-06-23T19:44:06","slug":"jay-leno-the-ultimate-car-collector","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.costulessdirect.com\/blog\/jay-leno-the-ultimate-car-collector\/","title":{"rendered":"Jay Leno \u2013 The Ultimate Car Collector"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jay Leno is well known, of course, as the long-time host of the Tonight Show. And now that he\u2019s officially \u201cretired\u201d, he can devote more time to his other passion \u2013 his world famous collection of nearly 200 cars and motorcycles. I wonder if he gets a multi-car discount on his car insurance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Leno\u2019s “Big Dog Garage<\/a>” holds one of the world’s greatest car collections, along with a state-of-the-art custom-built garage.<\/p>\n

Located in Burbank, California, \u201cBig Dog\u201d is a 17,000 square foot warehouse filled with cars, motorcycles, and motoring memorabilia.<\/p>\n

Jay likes to drive his vehicles in the Southern California area and can often be seen out and about on weekend trips around Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

One of Jay\u2019s most prized possessions in the collection is his 1955 Buick Roadmaster \u2014 the first car he bought and in which he came to California. As a struggling comedian in Hollywood, the Buick also served as his apartment on wheels.
\n Jay\u2019s restored 1955 Buick Roadmaster<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 He paid $350 in 1972
\n\u2022 Drove it to his first Tonight Show appearance in 1977
\n\u2022 GM Performance Parts ZZ572 crate engine \u2014 620 horsepower
\n\u2022 Compression Ratio \u2013 9.6:1
\n\u2022 Front suspension – C5 Corvette
\n\u2022 Rear suspension – C4 Corvette
\nTo keep everything in top shape, Jay has a full-time team of mechanics who are experts at repairing, restoring, and customizing anything on wheels.<\/p>\n

Jay answers his global warming critics<\/strong>
\nIn response to critics who claimed his vast collection of cars was causing global warming, Leno
\nteamed up with General Motors to create the EcoJet, a two-seater, environmentally-friendly
\nconcept car with serious speed capability.<\/p>\n

Jay Leno’s 2006 EcoJet<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 Designed to run on biodiesel fuel, using a Honeywell LTS101 gas turbine instead of a piston engine.
\n\u2022 The engine is normally used in helicopters and provides 650 horsepower, using a classical drivetrain with clutch and gearbox to drive the rear wheels.
\n\u2022 The car contains two separate gas tanks; one contains the main fuel, a biodiesel soy bean oil, and the other contains a traditional clean burning jet engine fuel.
\n\u2022 The JP-4 jet engine fuel is used to start the turbine easily at the beginning of a trip and also to run the engine at the end of a trip to clean it; biodiesel fuel tends to gum up a turbine (causing it to seize) if the biofuel is not cleared.
\n\u2022 The exhaust air is 1000 degrees Fahrenheit in normal operation and 1800 degrees Fahrenheit at full power.
\n\u2022 The car runs on refined cooking oil and so it produces the same kind of smell created by cooking French fries.
\n\u2022 The car has a fully-featured Azentek PC running Microsoft Windows Vista, with two LCD screens on the dashboard, one for the aircraft style digital gauges and another for the media and navigation controls,
\n\u2022 Two other smaller LCD screens are placed on the dashboard to provide rear views, as the car has no rear view mirrors and uses cameras instead.
\n\u2022 The functions are controlled by touchscreen or by speech recognition software using a multiple microphone array.
\n\u2022 The car was assembled by the Big Dog crew (mechanics employed by Jay Leno, usually to help him maintain his large collection of cars).<\/p>\n

Did you know that Jay\u2019s father was an insurance salesman? You can bet Jay knows the value of having good car insurance.<\/p>\n

Do you think Jay Leno is too obsessed with his collection? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jay Leno is well known, of course, as the long-time host of the Tonight Show. And now that he\u2019s officially \u201cretired\u201d, he can devote more time to his other passion \u2013 his world famous collection of nearly 200 cars and motorcycles. I wonder if he gets a multi-car discount on his car insurance. Leno\u2019s “Big […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2674,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[695],"tags":[188,400],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.costulessdirect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2665"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.costulessdirect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.costulessdirect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.costulessdirect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.costulessdirect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.costulessdirect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.costulessdirect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.costulessdirect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.costulessdirect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.costulessdirect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}