Jay Leno gears up for life ater 'Tonight'
By Marco R. della Cava, USA TODAY
BURBANK, Calif. — Contrary to common knowledge, Jay Leno does have children. Scores of them. And right now, one is sick.
A SUNNY OUTLOOK SAVES ENERGY Owning enough cars to fill a dealership puts Jay Leno in the elephant category when it comes to a carbon footprint.
But the comic's got a serious comeback for that line: "No one cares how much energy you use as long as you make it yourself."
Leno's epic garage often manages to do just that -- and sometimes generates extra.
Largely responsible is the 54-kilowatt solar panel array on his roof, which is supplemented by a wind turbine. "I'm almost totally off the grid," he says.
Other green garage touches include a foaming hand cleaner that requires no water, reusable aerosol canisters and a parts-making machine whose "blade" is a high-pressure water jet mixed with sand.
"It creates no pollutants in the manufacturing process, so you can safely drain the runoff," he says.
Leno's favorite eco-toys are two machines designed to deep-clean parts such as carburetors, which have narrow passageways that clog after years of use.
This task once required heavy-duty solvents (harmful to both the mechanic and the environment), but at Leno's place it's accomplished by placing the parts in either an ultrasonic cleaner (imagine a giant countertop jewelry cleaner) or a vat filled with bacteria that eat oil and grease to reproduce.
"These organisms are having sex while my parts are being cleaned," he says. "How fabulous is that?"
"Sounds like she's not hitting on the third cylinder," he says with concern as men with thick forearms and grease-stained hands huddle around a diminutive 1965 Honda S600 convertible. "Probably carburetion, not ignition."So begins another day at Leno's garage, a retreat where Tonight Show concerns vanish in the face of a hobby guided by encyclopedic knowledge and fueled by childhood passion. Actually, "garage" is too quaint a word for the trio of airplane hangars that house the comedian's ever-expanding family of accomplished, ailing and wayward kids.
Museum comes to mind.
Leno wrinkles his brow. "Well, you do that, and the government gets involved, you need handrails, gotta have big bathrooms..."
The mild protestations continue. But in the future, folks just may line up to see Leno crack carburetor problems, not jokes. To spend a day with Leno in his private retreat is to glimpse a man whose avocation is a source of flat-out fun that isn't easily matched by his job.
"If he wanted to, Jay could use his huge celebrity status as a sort of bully pulpit to pass on that great love of cars," says Dick Messer, director of L.A.'s Petersen Automotive Museum. "He is truly a doctor of cars, a professor on the topic. I wouldn't be surprised if he thought about transferring his skills into auto education."
Although Conan O'Brien will take over The Tonight Show in 2009, Leno says he isn't ready to permanently trade his sports coat for mechanic's overalls.
"I am definitely done next year — with NBC," he says, sitting in a huge recliner in his poster-strewn shop office. Would he go to another network? Leno just smiles. "I'm not a beach guy, and the last time I was in my pool was to fix a light. Don't worry, I'll find a job somewhere."
In the meantime, he'll keep coming here in between the more than 160 stand-up dates he does each year. For Leno, Hollywood's gifts are fickle, but his automotive family — from his machines to the half-dozen mechanics who work for him — grounds him in a reality that recalls his New England roots.
"In showbiz, your success is totally subjective. 'Oh, the ratings are great, we love you. Oh, they're not, we don't love you,' " he says, waving a hand dismissively. "Here in the shop, if something is broken and you fix it, you know you can be proud."
At home on the floor
Strolling past his babies, Leno seems enraptured. The floors shine like mirrors, reflecting gleaming body work and spotless glass and chrome. He just can't help himself, launching into automotive tales with each car he passes, two dozen examples under this one roof and a similar number in neighboring spaces.
Over here is a 1986 Lamborghini Countach given to him after Dean Martin's daughter blew up the engine. Over there is a bizarre car built around an engine pulled from a Patton tank. And nearby, a modest 1996 Mazda Miata that belonged to his late brother, Pat.
Leno is coy about just how and when he might shift gears and dedicate himself even more to his cars. Typical of his deflections: Wouldn't scaling back on work give him more time in the shop? "Nah. I'm already here daily anyway." But his future track is hinted at by what he's already accomplished while holding down his funnyman jobs.
A few years back, Leno's curatorial tendencies led him to start jaylenosgarage.com, a General Motors-sponsored site whose videos feature him riffing on car minutiae at a frightening pace. And his keen interest in historic vehicles has led Leno to sponsor a scholarship at McPherson (Kansas) College, which offers a four-year degree in auto restoration.
Leno also finds time to pop up as a judge at major car events and writes auto columns for Popular Mechanics and a number of British publications.
"Jay's car obsession goes way back to when he was working as a mechanic at Foreign Motors of Boston," says automotive historian Ken Gross, who has worked with Leno on the talk-show host's Popular Mechanics column for years. Gross' club-owner uncle gave Leno his first comedy job. "Jay was never greedy about cars, just happy with what he had. Now he likes to say, 'I'm just doing what a lot of people might do if they had the means.' "
That Everyman quality comes through in everything from his off-camera uniform (jeans and denim button-front shirt) to his mingling with local car nuts (Leno sightings at gearhead parking-lot gatherings are legion).
"Jay is never looking for bragging rights," says avid car collector Bruce Meyer, a Beverly Hills real-estate investor and neighbor of Leno's. "He'll often just stroll over to my house and say, 'Whaddaya got?' And we'll just sit there talking for hours."
Leno's collection is "quirky," Messer says. "He's got everything from truly world-class Duesenbergs to strange cars like a Czech-built Tatra. But for him, these cars aren't symbols of anything. They're just a way for him to relax and enjoy life with people who have the same interests."
And "no one is more knowledgeable about cars who doesn't do it for a living," Messer says. He compares Leno to the late actor Robert Stack, "who was a top-flight skeet shooter, though most people never knew it. Like him, Jay studies the stuff deeply, but he won't throw it in your face."
Working-class-hero cars
Back in his garage office, Leno wants to talk about monks.
"I was always fascinated by how they'd spend their lives writing these illuminated manuscripts. Then the invaders would come, and they'd hide them until they were gone. They knew there would always be people who would be interested in what they were saving. And I realized, I'm a bit like them."
Leno says there's no theme to his collected sheet metal, other than making sure the machines give pause. "I like cars that were great failures or simply unappreciated because they were ahead of their time," he says, launching into a discussion of his 100-year-old steam-powered Stanley cars, followed by a discourse on a 1905 Baker electric vehicle that can still go 110 miles on a charge.
Nestled in these cavernous spaces are a few stunning, high-priced modern exotics, chief among them a new $500,000 Porsche Carrera GT. But Leno is quick to point out that many cars here could be purchased for a few thousand dollars, like the 1968 Chrysler Imperial he bought from a 93-year-old B-movie producer who stocked his garage with every spare part the car would ever need.
"Most of the time, I'm buying the stories. Like me, these cars are working-class stiffs."
Leno may have millions, but his approach to wealth dates to his early days turning a wrench.
"I had two jobs as a kid, one at a fast-food restaurant and one at a Ford dealership. And I'd put the money from one job in one pocket and spend it. And the other paycheck I'd save," he says. "I do that now. I have always banked my Tonight Show money and lived off the stand-up. I have one credit card, no mortgage, and I don't lease."
Any plans for his Tonight Show windfall? Leno leans over a stack of papers, pretending they're bank statements. "I suppose I'll just look at the number one day and go, "Oooh, that's pretty neat,' " he says. He says he has set up foundations that donate to a range of charities but then closes the book on the topic.
Leno's now antsy, his feet tapping out an insistent rhythm like a ticking fan belt. In a flash, he's up and moving.
His swift gait carries him past dozens of motorcycles, another longtime passion. In the mix is a new Ducati Desmosedici: The first one off the Italian factory floor went to Tom Cruise. Leno praises the bike but hastily adds he's just borrowing this one. "I don't really need an $85,000 motorcycle," he says.
Next he strides by a man-high steel wheel, an ancient power generator of some kind. "You can see what the Luddites were afraid of. This could do the work of hundreds of men."
Well, you get the picture. The tour goes on. And on. Details spill out like oil from a leaky crankcase, accented, inevitably, by a wisecrack.
He's chugging away now
"These machines are really my only indulgence," he says. "Other than that, well, I'm still the kind of guy who goes to McDonald's with clipped-out coupons. My wife, Mavis, will take me out to a nice restaurant, but the whole time I'm going, 'Food costs this much?' "
But seriously, this collecting business, what cylinders is it firing? Leno answers as one of his shop foremen begins the noisy task of shaving metal off an old radiator grille.
"When I was little, I was never a sports guy. The notion of tossing a ball back and forth seemed ridiculous. What am I, a dog?" he says.
One day while riding his bike, "I saw a man standing next to his 1952 Jaguar convertible. And I was transfixed. The guy asked if I wanted to sit in it. I did. And I never forgot that moment.
"Maybe I'm just trying to get someone as excited about cars as that guy did for me. You know, the first car I bought when I had any money was a '50s Jaguar."
The pause is imperceptible, the grin childlike.
"Wanna see it?"