Jay Leno's Jet Car

They ran with anything that burns with oxygen it's not that loud you're driving with your wife I hate this I hate this car you really like playing with this don't you? yes, that's a lot of F's, this is a rocket hi, I'm Dennis Gage and welcome to my classic car, we're headed back to sunny California to visit Jayen. I always love hanging out with Jay, he always has cool stuff, turban cars. I think that's the topic for today, so let's see what's here. Jay J Jay hey Jay oh danis oh oh it's good you came to see man yeah, yeah, don't let this car come between us, how you doin'?

Good man, it's good to see you. I didn't call or anything, you know, sometimes. it's better to surprise you yeah yeah well I love surprises uh well this is a turban day here it's a turban day yeah yeah this is it so let's talk about turbin okay um now , several years ago, I showed you the turban motorcycle, it's not until 70 really, but you don't want to break the law and that would be wrong. This is the first truly practical turban car. The turbine car chrys from the early 60s. Rover from 1962. The English company built the first turbine, but it never worked. in any type of production, Chrysler really thought this was going to work, these cars always seemed very Thunderbird to me, yes, because it was the same designer, it was the designer who made the Thunderbird, who made this body as well and this was not intended to Whether it's a sports car or a futuristic car or even a concept car, a family car, it was meant to be a family car with a turbine engine and I would say the turbine in this one would be equal to maybe a 318 V8 um, the advantages They're incredibly soft, uh, no warm-up time, you don't have to change fluids, they probably once supposedly used almost anything, they used anything that burns with oxygen when they took them to France, they filled the tank with Chanel Number Five perfume when they went .

They filled Mexico with tequila Ser, are you serious, yes, no, seriously, but the interesting thing was that it really was the future? I mean, when you realize that India, China, many countries barely had internal combustion engines, we are moving towards jet engines, yes. I mean, I'll show you some things in the other room, some big posters. The piston engine is dead in 10 years. The piston engine will disappear. The emissions are not good. Jet aircraft are difficult to control emissions. Where they were brilliant, they were able to maintain them. it's quiet uhhuh actually the fact that it doesn't make any noise they just put that noise in almost like an electric car so people know it's there.

This car probably would have been around 14,000 in 1963 when a Cadillac cost 6,000 or 7,000. Being as good as a piston engine is not enough, it has to be superior and the new technology is successful, it cannot be the same, it has to be greater, why do it? The big advantage of this is that there is no maintenance, but when the engine runs, it runs. in a ball, yeah, yeah, now they weren't all this color, they were all this color, this is turban bronze, but even now when I take people out, they feel like the Jetson, you know, oh man, every Every time I see, I see these, uh. and I saw one of the ones I think was Frank KPS Indiana had one you actually helped him get another engine for that yeah there are only two of these in private hands but they look like something from Jewels ferns 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is like you know, some kind of prehistoric diving bell or that's the engine, that's the engine there just to give you an idea, when we compare the two turbines you'll see how quiet this one is and you go, I mean the accesses, that's everything and you walk away and it doesn't need warming up, there's no oil to check, there's no fluids to check, there's no cooling system to check nothing's off, you go, you go and that's it, that's the beauty of it and probably the best heater in winter, but it probably melts the ice on the street below, well, you know, that's one of the big myths about this car.

I mean, I wrote an article for Wards. I think Wards magazine had an article about the turbine and the editor said yes, put quotes and it melts. the asphalt and burn the ground no it's not like that the exhaust coming out the back is cooler than about 112 120° that's it you can put your hand there and it's okay because these regenerators use the heat over and over time. until the heat runs out and what comes out the back is quite cold, but as you can see, don't forget that in 1962 most cars you had to choke it, take the choke out, let it warm up, turn the key and you're good to go. .

Nail it and that's it, I can't believe it, you just turned it on like that, yeah, you just turn the key and that's it, you don't need to touch the fuel, you don't need to touch the accelerator pedal now. everything about it, I mean the design, they were, you know, turbine, everything looked like turbines, even the even looks like tur, yes, it has it, it has a turbine to me, the most successful styling part is the rear. I love the rear of the interior and it has cross tires and drum brakes, I mean, don't forget it's 1962, yeah, this thing with the propellers, I mean, yeah, yeah, it's phenomenal, but this was a luxury car Personal size, what a great rear, yes.

Oh yeah, and the style is pretty conservative when you look at some of the crazy styles from the early '60s with the big fins and all that kind of stuff. Well, they didn't make like you say 55 five prototypes 50 for consumers, but then they crushed them. Well then again sometimes a car can always be miswrapped like the ev1. If you're going into production with a car, you sell it to the public and you have to make parts and services available for that car for a full seven years. years, well, you only had 50 cars, so they were afraid of people buying them.

Remove the jet engine. Put a Hemi in it. It just ruined the purity of the car. So in the past, don't forget when it was driven. The '40s cars were still prevalent on the roads, you know, the big, tall ones, you know, the humpbacked mobiles and the Studa Bakers and everything else, and the big Chevy Fleetwoods and all that kind of stuff, so This really was the future, but would people pay double? like a Cadillac for this, probably not, probably not, you know, because again it wasn't a beat, it wasn't faster than a V8, in fact some of the V8s could have been faster, what it just had was the future and the future.

It is always uncertain for many people. I prefer to go. You know, the later days of old technology are always more reliable than the early days of new technology. That's why most people tend to go. I'm what I have an ex, but you like Turbin. you like turbin I like turbin I think they're a lot of fun I just like alternative power plants you know and uh we actually started building this car because I thought, well, there's no way I'm ever going to be able to get it one of the Cris from the turban car, so let's build our own business and it always happens, you know, it's like you never meet any woman until you get engaged, you know, oh, hey, oh, yeah, everyone sees someone beautiful, you know how it works. single, you and you know someone, oh, let's get married, hello everyone, who is it so late?

We called it eco jet because at the time we built it, biodiesel was pretty hot and we were running it on biodiesel and the idea was that you weren't using it. any fossil fuel, you just drive it, wait for the corn to come and then, you know, at harvest time, you drive it again, it was kind of a nod to that whole thing. I mean, we have what I call My Vegan Interior, there are no animal products, there is no animal leather or any vegetable leather, well, yes, yes, it is a synthetic material, the body is carbon fiber, everything, yeah, we use a lot of Corvette technology here we use U ZR1 brakes, we use Corvette Corvent.

ARS we have a four speed Corvette transmission, we did the transfer case and we downshifted because you can't run a shifter with turbines, it doesn't work with a clutch, so it has an automatic and GM the GM Styling Studios did The Styling for We, I mean, he has a real caddy aspect or a lot of what he does, uh, uh, it was kind of a job where we told them what we want and they would draw something that Do you think about this, what do you think about that? There's some Cadillac influence here and the GM design guys are great and we worked with Alcoa.

Alcoa developed these wheels. This is a new type of alloy. I think it's already available, but it's interesting. because it doesn't dull, it's fine and it doesn't polish, it just looks like that all the time. You don't have to do anything other than hose these wheels down, it won't get water stains, it won't do any of that. and these have, you know, the turbine blade, yeah, the little turbine blade, here's your exhaust. Here we learned the jet bike lesson by melting that bumper that time, so now we have it going up, yeah, so now it's going up. this is like the Chrysler turbine, in which case it's not as hot or it's quite hot no, no, it's actually not as sophisticated as the Chrysler turbine because it has a turbine engine that was built for automotive applications. again from one of the big helicopters and that's what I mean, that's the plane that you see on the helicopters and so we're trying to talk to Bose or someone to come up with a noise cancellation system. but you're sucking in hundreds of cubic feet of air every second, so there's not enough room in here to have filters, you just suck everything in, which is why we use headphones to communicate when we're in the car, I mean, we don't. that loud, but it's loud, pry it up, yeah if you're a car enthusiast, it's not that loud if you're driving with your wife.

I hate this, I hate this car, I hate this, would you say honey, I can't hear any of you? managers, well, I'm sorry, my, my, my brother, well, whatever, but anyway, is this the entry for everything? that's an inlet up here, yeah, that's an inlet, this is another inlet, there's one on each side here, I mean, that's that's a lot of air that has to go through some pretty small areas to feed that engine, no. It's a problem, it's not, but don't forget that you're open underneath, so you're pulling it in all directions, yeah, yeah, and you spent.

I mean, like you said, they spent about 3 years, yes, three years doing this and Jim Hall, Bernard and the guys did a great job. Some things we want to change, like this noisy little KK so

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id shifter which, as you can see, she's all carbon fiber and the people at Microsoft were great, they made the dashboard and everything for us and when you molded this here in this country or you, this was at a place called Metal Crafters in Fountain Valley, they have an autoclave. there and uh, this body is one piece, it's just that we're sitting on the chassis, we can't weigh much, no, it's pretty light, although when you have 70 gallons of fuel it gets heavy, does it use up the fuel pretty quickly?

Yes, I'm serious, just you. you're looking at how many gallons per hour you are, you're looking at 8 gallons, maybe nine gallons per hour, something like that if you're going down the highway and you're doing 80 90, your mileage is fine as soon as you stop sucking as much fuel as if you were or 90 exactly exactly holy cow and now that everything is done and everything is, it's functional, it's treeable, it's everything, yeah, it's on the road, it's a driving car and everything. This yeah, it's kind of like Batman Batman every time we take it out, you have this kind of crime fighting, yeah, I mean, you know we take it to car shows and stuff like that, and it's fun to build your own car, there there's your Corvette transaction. coming out of the turbine shaft, holy cow, through a reduction gear like a pretty serious one because again, this is, this is turning it again tens of thousands of RPM exactly H wow, well, uh, can we get it out, come on Let's get it out, hey, I'm here. finished with that at 15% we put fuel in or I heard something, come on, you know, it's incredibly loud, yeah, it's a little loud, probably a stereo in this car is useless, no, well, I have a stereo, I realized that shit , I just started accelerating and pulled. very difficult that's a lot of throttle I'm not even half throttle this is crazy this is completely crazy yeah I've never seen so many cell phone cameras people get scared when they see this yeah it's funny that you really like playing with this Don't you? ?

Yes, it's very funny, this is a rocket. I'm going to show you the scariest thing I've ever seen on my rearview camera, so until our next meeting remember to honor the Timeless Classics. I'm Dennis Gage, happy. Motoring