Peter Brock's Hang Glider Transporter VW Bus - Jay Leno’s Garage

It's more fun to

hang

glide if you have the car you

hang

glide with. I think half of the car you hang Clyde with yeah, he was like a normal horse, like it was another episode of Jay Leno's Garage, the vehicle he's featuring today seems to be a 1971 Volkswagen pickup I might say it's not that special Well, it's very, very special. Does this vehicle belong to a very special guy who has done an incredible, very special job on it? We're always excited when a lot of royalty comes along and this guy is right at the top of the heap designing the Corvette Stingray Carol Shelby the Cobras mr.

Peter Brock Peter come on my friend it's a pleasure to see you it's always a pleasure or you know we love having you now for the uninitiated you know again what it says it says 71 Volkswagen but you're not at all normal so tell us What do we have here? It is absolutely the best vehicle as long as you are a hang

glider

pilot. Well, then you're a hang

glider

pilot. We have the largest hang glider manufacturing in the world and we won the World Championship six times in a row, but what allowed us to do it was this very special vehicle because most people are not aware that hang gliders fly between five and 15,000 feet, They fly hundreds of miles and the competition lasts a week and you have to be able to climb these dirt roads in the Owens Valley in the competitions that are normally held in Owens Valley between the White Mountains and the Sierras, and to get to the top of These mountains you have to have a really good off-road vehicle, there is almost nothing as good as the Volkswagen, the problem. it's that they just didn't have enough power, that's for me now that Volkswagen said, what was this thirty-six horsepower, maybe forty-eight or something like that at the time?

So how do you solve the horsepower problem the way I usually do? Put a GM v8 in it and it means this is one hell of a vehicle. We have thousands and thousands of miles on this. Now it's been very reliable, but it's probably more fun than anything else because whoever has a Volkswagen truck when they make them. on the road everyone wants to run well and finally we get going and we just disappear 18 years again absolutely exactly exactly really a fun and fun piece now with this belt you built it quite a long time ago in the past or I know it was back in the days when we were hang gliding, you know, but I mean the days and by that, Shelby and those were built in his workshop, no, we built in our workshop, okay, which was BRE, but before that it was really the glider company you planned, which is the largest hang glider company in the world, okay, that explains why you have these stands.

Wait and you will notice that they are aerodynamic. I saw that it was like a wing, yes, yes, and that is to support. the hang gliders when you're there because they're about 18 feet long when I'm traveling so you put all the team's wings on top of this, you put the whole crew back here and it goes up the mountains until it goes up to about six seven thousand feet and that's where you take off, but it's good that you put one plane at a time, right, oh no, no, no, a big ant, they're all, they're all folded, about 98,200 pounds each, oh, and probably I've got about four guys flying, so I'm going to throw them all at the top up there.

Wow, okay, now it's still rear-drive core. Absolutely yes, okay and silly question, the engine is in the back so you want to stick with something from Volkswagen. Well, at that time it was a very popular thing to put all kinds of engines and VW rights, so there were people who manufactured all the adapters that were placed, so it's something quite easy, the only trick of course, is water cooled, so we had to put some pipes in the front and put a big radiator in the front. Did you also use electric water pumps or not just a standard water pump?

It's all good, you know, I showed it. You, the Merlin we built over the hallways and had to run electric water pumps just to keep the flow slow. Yes, I think traveling this great distance. You know that the water pump is more than enough. More than enough at this point. That's why? This is real? Is this really? Yes, that is the high point to fill it. Well, then you want to have it. You just breathe out. See every time I have to fill it, so it's the only car where we fill a radiator from the inside and inside.

It's all set, okay, everything is very, very practical, so this is a 71. You didn't buy it new. Did you know? I think we bought it used, but we had another one before, but this one has disc brakes the first year. disc brakes, so that's the main thing in a great performance because it's kind of easy to drive all day at night E and run it, it's been a fabulous thing that most people don't know, you know, because I'm interested. In aerodynamics, one of the interesting things is that the drag coefficient on a Volkswagen bus is better than that of a Jag coupe.

That's right, yeah, you know what I guess. Let me guess what the resistance is: 0.36. I think so. It's about that, yeah, I mean, I understand that for me a Volkswagen Beetle is more aerodynamic. The Countach is like 0.49 or some crazy person really goes up there, yeah, something like that because it's literally a brick because the front is like that. Now you know, obviously, the Jaguar in general because you have to multiply the frontal area of ​​the vehicle by the drag coefficient, so the Jaguar is a little bit better when you do that actual number of ways.

This is actually a higher form. to the Jaguar and that's what most people didn't understand, you know, that very flat roofline, the very flat side lines, it looks like a brick, they really look aerodynamic at all. I don't know, it's transportation efficient, actually, now, tell me about this. particular model Volkswagen, what service van, yes, this has been for commercial use, that kind of thing because they are quite rare, right? You don't see many of the popular ones on the course or all the window trucks you know. You know, up to 23 windows in them, right? I remember they had seats in front and behind and an open bed; that was popular, a lot of plumbers and guys like that had those, yeah, okay, they're very, very versatile, uh, I think they really The funny thing is that it didn't really have the right power and speed for the American market and by putting that Buick in the back, it just made it so lovely.

Have you ever been approached by Volkswagen? Yes, we have done it. I've seen you do it, it's very good, you know, I am because, like the English, they took the Sunbeam Tiger and the Cobra and the Gordon Key Bowl and all those cars, but the Germans never noticed, they never no . Don't believe it, we were, I mean, we were mostly in the mountains, hiding, hang gliding, from here or nowhere, and that's where this really shines because, boy, you could just go up these fire roads that normally you know. take a jeep or something and that thing that all that experience on the course came from racing in Baja and so many great Baja cars have been built from both wagons so just taking all that experience that we had in Baja and putting it in this with a great vote motor, made it really ideal.

I'd say most people see this once. I know you'll cause automotive work, yes, because with Cobras and Corvettes it eats everyone up, but obviously we do towing too well, yes we do. today's trailers, yes, Aero Vault trailers, aerodynamic, correct and very light, and also very efficient, probably about fifteen percent more efficient. Now, when you design aerodynamic trailers, it's different than designing a car because you have a vehicle in front of you, absolutely fine what you're trying to do. to do because every car you are going to tow is different so it will alter the air coming back to the trailer so what you want to do with the trailer is collect all that turbulent air and put it back. to the body and hold it so that it passes as smoothly as possible.

Well, on our trailer, the entire front end is completely rounded and the top is rounded, so it's shaped like a bullet with a hole in the front and that just picks up all that turbulence. air over it and smooths it out completely back and the other advantage of this because it's quite round is that when you're on a cross and it's not affected at all when you have a big 40 footer or it's coming at you. Typically, if you have a square front trailer, it will put you more than a couple of feet away. I can't even feel it with these things, they're just stabilized, very, very good, yeah, well, let's get sick, let's walk, this is, for example.

You are very clear, well, by the way, it is the transmission. Well, it's a standard broadcast, but again we have a lot of good people. I can also stream the Volkswagen transmission, but it's beefed up a bit. Okay, all the experience we've had in Baja. just build it a little heavier and it just holds up wonderfully well, how do you make it heavier? You can't make the case stronger, right? You don't make the gears the same, what are they all, that's the same thing, but some of the gears are a little bit stronger, okay on the ratio change and a top view of the bearings, yes, but apart from that, it's more of a talk, you know, you look at a healing gearbox for racing cars, originally both from Volkswagen, oh.

Okay, you very cleverly blacked out the radiator here, yes, that's a little touch of style, granny, and that's enough to cool it down, obviously, what's that Jim Joe thing? I imagine we just custom made it at the time just so it fits into it, yeah everything here is pretty good, obviously you've welded them onto the roof. Good job, but it all goes directly to the A-pillar, so it has a lot of strength because you're carrying all that weight on it. up and of course all the really rough roads around it, everything has to be super strong right, and this would normally have been chrome when it was new, right, no, no, no, that's all PW standards, everything is painted.

Oh, some people. You know, you put chrome on there, though on the later stuff, but they're very, very discreet, so there's a commercial vehicle and of course you bought your Recaro seats from Rick and the father now someone signed... whose signature I just don't know. idiot put his name in there Peter Bronco that's your name why would you sign your own car right? because I gave it to my son-in-law. I kept it in beautiful shape all these oh okay I'm going to say he's kind of proud of so I signed it no no that's not okay that's something he signs his own card very funny like with Carroll Shelby and everything to show me, they are showing it.

Cal will have to sign this Mustang. I would see them, you know, the weird ones they are. the right unsigned, the rare one is the unsigned, that's the one worth it, but try to find one of those people, okay, let's walk her in the bag, let's show you what you've been waiting to see how we got this Buick, here you come. Let's go to the rear, I like the very subtle air inlet that there was, the thing that has the oil cooler is definitely an oil cooler, it is an aircraft oil cooler that is all integrated into the slide and, of course, new, even if you look there, the work on the fenders. and things to put on the big tires.

I've kept this as subtle as possible. Oh yes, but the metal work is very well done. Yes, all of that was done by George Bosco, who is our top fabricator at BRE and also one of the best at Shelby's. He's probably best known as the guy who first put the v8 into Alpine production to make the Sunbeam Tiger. He had a Sunbeam Tiger for me and we used to call it a poor man's Cobra, you know back in the day and it was, but I remember I think it was a Cober 64 Hot Rod magazine, that old thing.

I'm putting a v8 in an Alpine, you know, yeah and that, yeah, and that was like, oh, I have to go back and look at the photo now and check and see the work of it. It was simply beautiful. He used to build all the heads for all of our race cars and the wonderful thing about the heads is that they are usually very difficult to change between practice and the race if you change engines and because they get so much heat, they wanted to. To save it right, you could take a set of Georgia headers, get a car in, very hot guys in gloves, take those headers off, put a new motor back in and everything would slide along beautifully.

Wow, the quality of your work, wow, that's great, beautiful. You meet a lot of legendary guys from that era. I mean, even when you got rid of it, it was just a used car at the time. I mean, it's become an iconic vehicle. People who collect VWs now, but Shelby and your The history and everything that makes it a really valuable vehicle, especially with guys like George Boss Golf, who worked on it with all the engine installation for us. When we did this, everything worked again. It was amazing and you said ten miles he was the one he did first when the show came to Roots.

I think it was Ian Garrard from Roots who had the idea to put the v8 in there and asked Ken Miles to do the first one. Ken Miles had a store inHollywood and he put it on. in a very quick dirty and then that allowed Jarrod to sell that project to Roots properly and at that point they said cool let's do a real production and then they took it to Shelby's and George did all the production work so it could be copied into production oh, that's really cool, yeah, cool, well let's take a look now, we've got some really cool ones this year because the engine is mounted just like the one you put the Volkswagen in, oh, look at that, yeah, okay, but aside of that.

It's just a normal Buick engine in there and how much heavier this is than the Volkswagen engine. I think it weighs about one hundred and twenty-five pounds. Yes, I'll tell you after I do it. I was a little worried about having this amount of weight on the right rear. Yeah, you can't even feel it there. If I had to do it again, I would put an aluminum Chevy with more power, but very good, this is the legendary engine that went into Rover, yes, and into all British cars. I think who else uses this, use the rover mm, which here was the sedan and then of course let's start generally learning oh yeah, yeah, it's one of the most popular v8s and in England, you know, it's cool, but yeah you see all the really. cool stuff like you know, look at all these little brackets, read, hold all the things, yeah, very well done, nice brackets, all I know it looks like, look at that, it looks like a factory piece, sometimes it's George at work, yes, on the stove, in all that.

I came in here it's just and what kind of horsepower are you generating. Oh, I don't think I let you know maybe a couple hundred or so. Yeah, yeah, no, not really a hot rodder at all. What are the main advantages that it had and a lot of torque? it stayed really cool going up the mountains those long runners until you got a lot more, yeah, probably an extra gallon or two of coolant, but when you put all the guys, you know, and all their gear on top and all their stuff, and then They take off and you know, they circle about 12,000 feet or so and then they cross the country, whatever it is, so this had to go down and stay in contact with him on the radio and chase him through the desert, remember they were and pick it up. get them up and then take them home at night and put them to sleep and that's how we win championships.

Wow, that's quite a part of the story. I didn't know and this also opens, right. I just said you can see it's not a show car. You can see these have all been the old covers, all the intermediate struts gone by the wayside. You can see inside that they are all welded together. Everything is really made so you can access it. He was basically a great. box to put all the equipment in and take it to the top of the mountain, yes, over and over again, it wasn't built to be a fast car or a show car, it was just built to be a workhorse, wait exactly and for That has just been a fabulous vehicle.

Now, did you sell it or give it to your son or did he give it to my son? He's fine, my son, you know he's had it the whole time and actually he was pretty worn out when we finished it and he's. I took it and really cleaned it all up and took such good care of it that it's really kind of a family heirloom. He now he has two kids who love him too, so he'll probably stay in the family for a while, yeah, yeah, well. You've had it, you've had it since 73, right, yeah right, didn't we start VRE?

It's very cool, but the nice thing is you know the guys can put their bikes inside the motorcycles inside. I mean, it's the best thing ever. -around the SUV I know I just noticed this I know I see through it auntie Is anything right? What are all the conduits again? All kinds of beautiful work from Georgia again to get the air in and out of the oil cooler because it's the The main thing is that I've always thought that the best thing you can do for an engine is to make sure you maintain the oil temperature, probably within 218 degrees, just above the boiling point, which means if water gets into the oil, it evaporates. and you don't end up with acidic soil, it just lasts hundreds of miles, well you know, and of course much bigger than the original tires, yes, yes, very well made, that's great.

Can we take it for a ride? You are absolutely going to enjoy it. Oh let's hang glide but since I drove one of these there are cameras now good boy the clutch is pretty easy it feels like a normal vote so I can say you stand on the ice it's very nice it has a fun power and every year. oh yeah I mean you really made it such a usable vehicle it's funny no amount of horsepower won't fix it so it's still hang gliding oh I haven't done that in years I ruined my back moving furniture and a paragliding in orbit, it is absolutely the best.

Something fun I've done, yeah, I had all the best life force guys in the world on our team, yeah, and then we flew all over the world, South America, Argentina, a world in itself where most of the People are, everything happens in heaven, so sport, I guess. You could have started with the Econoline van or something I already had. What happens is that they don't work because of the debt. You know, climb all the mountains. Okay, that's what the Volkswagen did. It was so good for you. That's what you learned. all that stuff to be able to drive it off road and haul everything and there's just nothing in the world that beats this particular vehicle for this purpose, you know guys have big four wheel drive pickup trucks and jeeps or whatever Whatever it is, we could pass anyone on the most difficult roads.

Why did you choose the Buick v8? Why not? You already know one of the Corvette engines. Well, we were trying to keep it as light as possible. Well, you know, this is the light. I was worried about the weight in the rear, yes after having experience with it I would have gone with an aluminum Chevy just so it had more hubs and was easier to get parts for that kind of thing. You see my Tatra, no, I did it. It's not established as a diagnosis and yes, yes, I'm familiar with them, they're fabulous, they have to be a lot lighter than this, yes, well, hogs litvenko was really yes and of course your coffee, a lot of things for me, that's Lisa Portia and when I.

Think surreal, you know the name, it helps polish, you're Polish, you're right, oh yes, Allens emissaries, matosinhos, but it's very interesting because he, you know, went to work for Zeppelin and, of course, he did it with Natasha, yes, she did the Tatra, that's what many think. that out of the point coefficient to that no can you imagine well there's no reduction so it's all yeah all the airflow you know it's a wonderful car to drive yeah it was guaranteed to get 20 miles per gallon at 60 miles per hour, which a 38 was all, but the interesting thing is that the guy who did all the Aero work with the Luna Ball comedian named Reinhard, who cooked the hot movie for them, worked for the parent company of Paul at the Zeppelin factory, he was an apprentice here, so he was influenced by I found out that you didn't really have the answer because it was three o'clock in the conical food car, so he started working with the flat roof to cut it off and it was there, for Of course, he entered the studies.

Everyone calls it the cocktail, yes, but it was really a fight of the heart, but Pasha filled that, he realized that all that made it work so well. I survived the Volkswagen transmission, I can do the tour, oh, I just held on without any car, you look, you worry, far from the story, you wish you had it. What do you choose what design do you choose if I like it or any car I would like? Mozart's 8c 2900 colloid, something that cars for me you know, pray, okay, it's so beautiful that János designed them between the superchargers the way each part of these. are increasing, they were very interesting the first part of Hill, the guy sorts out the dirty car, showed it and took a couple of years, if he would give it, yeah, you know, I appreciate good design, a commercial d-pad.

Oh, so much rubbish, you know, some of it. We are in the computer age, in fact, you can do anything and everyone works in two dimensions and you don't have the opportunity to do things in three dimensions and work in clay, whoever it is, so all the sculpture is quality , the best. I mean, there were some really cool guys with you, it's a beautiful thing, you know, we never saw a relative of mine, yeah, something about the angle, I mean, it seems like you know I like old motorcycles, old cars, with the penalty by mistake it is good, good.

Well, get off the road, okay, honey, it might be a hit against a tree in a bed, yeah, yeah, Hank Lighting's penalty seems a little excessive. I think the problem is that these people don't understand, you know, they get so enthralled with the ability to fly that they don't really know what's going on with the weather or and you know you're not just 50 feet off the ground, you're hundreds of feet away. thousands of feet high and you know it's pretty amazing that you'll be flying ahead and you look out and you'll see a giant, your plane is coming towards you.

I did this, I went cross country once going to Riverside. You've never seen a C-130 as big as when it flies below. Wow, and you're hang gliding, yeah, yeah, high up with you. I don't think that was more than because they were approaching Riverside. Wow, they suck you in after that thing, they would be fast about 200 feet below me, but the thing is you know you're just a sunrise in the sky and here I am coming at you and you can't understand that you can't even go up. nowhere, you just go and sit there and why run?

Is he going to run into you? He's above you below you and he just you know it's not a glide path that's below you. It's pretty amazing and you don't land on your wheels. You could just come, but only the company ends. Yes, now. You put a custom exhaust system on this thing, yeah, oh yeah, it's all custom built and it's maintained well every year anyway, if things were built like you know, you got guys like here that buy like Kara, yeah, and all the Boys, those guys are hard to find, oh they were when I was a kid.

That's like that for a dime, a dozen could do things now, it's so weird on my feet. Wow, I think you know the hallway above the guys' ball manufacturing. North Carolina, yeah, then. you can do anything in North Carolina just fabulous back there no more than California it's just not like that here we were depressed I went to the whole boot shop that one did bring back a lot of memories so what do you think about when you went to design why was it the best mistake? Was there another mistake that you think would have been better?

I'd like to work on that a little sooner. Arrow I think there was a lot more passion in engineering and aerodynamics. People didn't understand anyone. Yeah, back to 30. Oh yeah, why is everyone doing stuff in the system? I feel very, very lucky from that last time. You know, everything was done by hand and we hid the invoice cards in Italy in buildings, yeah, yeah, and that doesn't exist anymore. That's all, yes. I wasn't really surprised going to Goodwood, you know, last week, there was a lot more reverence for the older cars there than removing the old water, keeping it together Peter, thanks for bringing this car.

Oh, Jane, it's a little white Volkswagen. Buy this. You should have bought it to feel abilities, you know there's nothing wrong with this car, a little more horsepower, I'd think, oh, this thing probably has a hundred thousand miles on it now, well, it runs great, it's a lot of fun to drive and qualify, you always have the most innovative. exciting stuff, so if a guy is retired you have to slow down a little bit, yeah, practically working all the time, right, I wouldn't know what to do if I go there, he'll retire, but it sounds like you're having fun for free. - thanks friend I have a great cake let's go Pete brocco it's a pleasure that it comes very great