Jay Leno returns to the NBC family with Jay Leno’s Garage, a new series premiering Wednesday, October 7 at 10PM on CNBC.
On the new show, Leno mixes the two things he has a passion for — classic or unique cars, and being on television — and goes across the country to see the automobiles that makes us who we are.
Every episode of Jay Leno’s Garage takes on a theme — innovations, Califonia car culture, the history of an iconic brand… there are many possibilities… and what’s tying it all together is Jay. There will be test drives, and because Jay Leno owns some unique cars and other motorized vehicles himself, it will be a lot easier to drive them on the air, as the insurance premiums are a lot cheaper when you’re driving your own car.
“Usually when you do these kind of car shows and you get an expensive car, there is an insurance waiver and you can only drive it around the driveway, and you have to go around the cones, and there are police protecting it,” Leno explained at the Television Critics Association press tour. “But since I own a lot of these cars, we can just beat the crap out of them. So you’ll see them being used as intended. They’re not all mine, but a lot of them are, so I have the accessibility.”
“The thing that restricts a lot of car shows is nobody wants to pay the waiver,” Leno admitted. “For example, we had Steve McQueen’s XJSS Jaguar, a very famous one, and the car is worth $60 million. So they wanted, you know, an insurance premium for the day. It was like $900,000. Well, okay. So that really doesn’t work. But there are a lot of cars that have gone up in value and I’ve had for years and we can use and abuse, and hopefully people will enjoy it,” he continued.
Jay Leno’s Garage also gives Leno the opportunity to learn and experience the personal stories behind these automobiles… and sometimes those stories inspire the former Tonight Show host to purchase said vehicles. “An old lady called me and she had a ’51 Hudson, [but] I already have a ’51 Hudson,” Leno recalled. “She says, ‘Come out and look at it.’ Well, I went out there, and she was 96 years old, and she bought it new with her [late] husband, and her and her family drove across the country. The only car they ever had. When he died back in ’96, she just went in the garage every day and dusted it off. It had been sitting for 20 years. When I saw the car and she told me the story, well, I had to buy it.”
“When we went back, I told her I was going to take her for a ride in it when it was finished, and she went out and she got her hair done and she got her two kids, who are 70 now, and we all went for a ride. The kids are pushing each other in the backseat, and she’s slapping them, you know, like it’s 1951 all over again. She had such a wonderful time. She was 96, but no hearing aid, no glasses. I mean, she looked maybe 70. It was so much fun to buy that car, fix it up, and then take her for a ride, with her kids in the back. And that’s the case of where you really buy the story more than you buy the car,” he explained.
Jay Leno’s Garage premieres October 7 on CNBC.
