No, one of the best sounding engines ever. Welcome to the episode of Jay Leno's garage today. We go way back from the beginning. I've had this car since just about nineteen eighty two. The only car I've had longer than this is my 55 Buick Roadmaster. I bought that one is transportation. This is the first car I bought when I got some money and want to have some fun. This is my first real sports car, at least in California.

You know, this is a car that kind of did it for me. It started the whole car thing when I was a kid growing up in Andover, Massachusetts, or in a lot of cool cars around and less than four doors was a sports car. You know, if your dad had a two door sedan home. So it's pretty cool. You know, most people at station wagons or four door sedans.

And when I was nine years old, I was riding my bike up a hill and I got to the top of the hill and I saw one of these in a kind of a blue kind of blue steel gray color. And there was an older guy polish in the car.

And I saw it sitting in his driveway and I just transfix. I looked at it for like ten or 15 minutes, just staring at this car.

I had never seen anything like I just thought was the greatest kind ever seen.

And after the while, the guy was, you know, doing things to the car polish that you saw me. You want to sit in this car and called me. All right, let me sit in it. And it was just fantastic.

I thought it was the most exciting, greatest car I had ever seen. It was a true sports cars, and it never left my mind.

And when I kind of made some money, this is the first car I bought.

Fast forward 40 years.

I told this story in a magazine article that I had got to sit in this Jagwar One Twenty and a guy in San Francisco who was from my hometown, who I didn't know, wrote me a letter and he said, hey, that car, you Samin, the guy still has it. It's in his barn. And I really I said he was a pretty old guy. Well, when I was nine, I thought this guy was 40 or 50.

He was why?

He was only twenty four. But when you're a kid, you think everybody's a lot older than they really are.

So this guy gave me his phone number. His name was Don Milligan. I called him up and he remembered me.

I remember inviting me over to sit in the car and he still had it, but he parked it in his barn in 1970 and it sat there ever since. Now you got to understand Andover, Massachusetts, a really old town.

The barn was built late. Seventeen hundreds. I mean, this barn was filled with artifacts going back literally hundreds of years. And the car was buried under it. And I went back home to Andover, to my hometown just to look at it. And there it was. He hadn't done much with it. It was still the same color, obviously had been sitting in a barn and sort of deteriorating. And I think maybe one day down we'll get around restoring it.

But it was the car that did it for me.

Well, here's the car and here's Don Milligan. Don, how are you? Very well, Jay, how are you? This is the bushy haired guy that showed me the car when I was nine years old. So nothing is change? No, even the color is the same.

So when I got this one, it was completely stock had the three point four liter motor. These were phenomenal cars. It's called the K one twenty because it was capable of one hundred and twenty miles an hour, which was unbelievable. You know, there weren't many American cars in the late 40s and early 50s.

They could even break a true hundred miles an hour. So the fact that this could do it was just incredible. You know, Clark Gable had one of these and this was the car that all the sports stars and all the don't forget, this predates the Corvette and the Thunderbird and all of those cars. You know, the one twenty JAG.

It was a huge hit when it was unveiled in nineteen forty eight at the auto show. The first couple were aluminum skin.

Those are the alloy, those are the really expensive ones, the lighter bodies.

And the once they realize there is such demand for the car they started to produce it in steel.

Since these engines through a lot of heat, you can open these, these open clothes from inside and you open up like that. It's got a screen to keep birds and stuff from getting in there and it just blows, you know, cool air into the footwell so you can get a little extra cooling. Nice, little elegant Mary here. You know, just beautiful details.

And the classic Smith Gages, which are just my favorite thing, the sponheimer, the tank, all the gauges, you know, each mark is just beautiful to look at.

I replace this motor with a three point eight motor from a later JAG. A lot of people like the four point two. I like the three point eight because I think it revs a little bit better. It just sounds better. I put a five speed box in it gearbox.

Other than that, everything else is done pretty much just standard spec. I didn't put this brakes on it back in the day because it had these beautiful alloy Alphen brake drums, which I just think look kind of cool and polished up nicely.

And this is the kind of car you can slow down using the transmission pretty effectively. So I never really miss the disc brakes. I like to drive it. Swiftly, I don't drive it crazy fast, but it's just such a wonderful, wonderful car to drive. We had to cast the wood steering wheel and it has a tape deck. And I think the same cassette has been in here.

OK. Introducing Alan Jackson, the country was going to be in there 20, 20, 30 years, probably something like that. So that's pretty cool.

But it is the best sounding sports car you can imagine.

To me of the series is a one 20, the one 40, the one 50, and then the key. But in the case here is the one 20 to me is the purest. It's the sexiest.

By the time the one 40 came along, cars a little more bulbous, a little wider, a little more leg room. And then by the time the one 50 came out, it was just too big. It was too much like an American car had big, huge bumpers and things on it. And it wasn't as appealing as this. This has this is the roadster. This has no windows where you have plastic windows but no roll up windows.

Then they made the convertible, what they call it. They made a hard top, of course, a one 20. And then they made the drop, had the drop head coupe, which had roll up windows and a beautiful top. But it didn't look as sexy as this.

But let me open the hood and show you what the engine looks like. This engine was sort of the small block Chevy of England, it was used in all the Jags, in the sedans and the limousines and the X case, this engine ran from about nineteen forty eight, got up until the 80s, probably.

It was really a beautiful, terrific design, beautiful looking engine with these alloy valve covers.

This was got through Webers on it originally would have to use these three Webers, make a nice noise, electronic ignition, pretty straightforward and nothing unusual here.

It's got an oil cooler here in the front.

And I've got a like a little jacket that slips over this in the winter time. So keep the oil from getting too cold.

You know, Jagwar has got a reputation of I think the reputation is mostly the fact that American Garage didn't know how to work on them or didn't have the tools, all the nuts and bolts or British Standard or Whitworth. They're not American. Then ham fisted mechanics would kind of fix these like they were, you know, Flathead Fords. They're not they're pretty sophisticated motor stock.

This was probably around one hundred and sixty horse, maybe one hundred and eighty with some tuning.

I think now it's about two fifty, something like that. It just sounds glorious.

It's just a wonderful, wonderful motor. I added the fog lights and we put the screens on. Those were popular back in the day to prevent rocks from breaking the glass. It has the wire wheels knock off wire wheels.

The one I saw, I had Spatz on the back.

By that I mean it covered the rear wheel so you could barely see the rear wheel. That's close to something in here.

I had this done in a place called Tsoukas Unlimited up there, a past Santa Barbara. As you can see. There's a plate right on there, Bill, for Jay Leno. Here you go.

And of course, I love the hood strap here, you know, you can get these a lot of Bacardi's had these and I call the Bogarde place because here we have straps.

There are three hundred fifty dollars apiece. I know. OK, and then I went to a bridal shop, a horse place.

I said make one of these. He goes, yeah, about 15 bucks. I said, that's ok. Yeah I'll, I'll go for 50. Yeah. So you don't really need to go to the Mugabe guy yet that you just about anywhere.

Uh what else. Let's come around the back of the car. You know, the early 50s was a great time for British motoring because the British had, well, the fastest land vehicles you could buy.

The fastest saloon car was the Bentley Continental and one hundred twenty something miles an hour fast. A sports car with the one 20 and the fastest motorcycle was the Vincent Black Shadow.

So the British had all three categories. Pretty impressive. As you can see.

It's a very elegantly style car.

You've got a locking gas cap right there and there was no actual gas cap. I'll show you how that works.

Well, let me do that for you right now. You know, everybody has this now where you you don't have a gas cap anymore.

You just have. See, there's no cap, this rubber plug here, seals, once you shut the door, you know, for and everybody else has that new deal with no cabins open, the door is sticking. And then when you shut this, it seals right here. Plug goes in there. And you lock it up your tail lights here, little bumper at kind of deal, sounds kind of funny.

Let's take a look at the trunk, as you see. Got a full sized spare tire, which is kind of cool.

You don't get that anymore. You got a proper tool kit. And right there you got your manual right here operating how to fix everything by the side.

And this is a day when the manuals really tell you how to do stuff. Now, manuals just say do not drink contents of battery, you know, even new manuals. How what's the tire pressure? Please see your dealer. Oh, shut up. You know, this tells you everything.

Valve clearance, everything. You want to rebuild your engine by the side of the road. No problem. You can do it with this baby. And you got your hammer here, brass for your knockoffs. You don't chip the crumb, you got your jack and a full sized spare tire.

None of this stupid little can ever go free.

No, you don't have that. This is quite a car by back in its day and, you know, it was a real bargain to these were not cheap, but they certainly weren't expensive compared to some of the other European stuff, like Ferrari and Maserati. To me, these are always the ultimate.

This is a car that the average guy could aspire to without totally breaking the bank.

You know, nobody could afford Maseratis or Ferraris, but these were reasonably priced and they ran with the big boys, too, which I thought was pretty cool. This is the era when they won Lamon, what, four times in the 50.

So we'll fire it up and you can hear what it sounds like. And this is a lot of fun.

Come on, let's go for a drive. You know, this car is actually how I met Banan, our shop foreman, when I used to racetrack's. He owned the shop that specializes in Jagwar repair. I had a valve hang up in the head. We pulled the head off and we thought, who was the best guy to take it to Lisbona? This guy on Jubilate. So we brought it to him. Why did a beautiful job? The car is run perfectly ever since.

And I thought, you know, instead of sending stuff out, having to do it, why don't I just come work for me? And that's what we did. He moved down here, he got a house and he's been the shop foreman now for the last got well, pretty close to 20 years. And he does just a great job. And that's why this car runs south so good. You know, this is the car I'm talking about when I say all the fun happens between 40 and one hundred and ten or twenty miles an hour, because that's when this car really shines.

You know, I've got an awful lot of cool stuff in the garage, but it always comes back to this one because this was the first real sports car I ever had. And it just makes the most glorious sound. Listen. You know, it's funny, if they only build one hundred of these, maybe be a million bucks apiece, but they build thousands of these Jags, so consequently, for the longest time, you get that number pretty much close to nothing.

And it's Kasur, one of are still pretty reasonable compared to most exotic cars, because this truly is an exotic car. But it's one you could drive every day. It's fast, it's reliable, it's dependable, doesn't overheat. Just a wonderful, wonderful car. And that sounds. I would say this is just about as fast as maybe a standard C five Corvette with 350 horsepower, this weighs a little bit less. Certainly not slow. I mean, obviously, there are faster cars, but certainly not from this period.

The greatest Jagwar I've got to drive was when they brought Steve McQueen's X SS Oh man, what a revelation that was. I just thought it was a little better version of this now. Totally different car. The engines sort of tilted. But if I can have that one, I'll take this one any day when you're putting your foot in it. 1954, it's amazing. Still, one of the best sounding engines ever, really was an amazing engine in period and still is today.

I mean, it's got plenty of Bonnyman talk. It pulls strong all the way through the rev range. It's it's really the precipice of engineering. It's the kind of car I just look for, bridges you can go on to so you can hear that engine reverberate off the walls, the show I'm talking about. It's a bridge right here. I think William Lyons bought a little bit from some of the great cars and he wanted to design this is a benevolent God, he looked at Tombola Largo Teardrop, you know, but whatever the reason, I'm glad he did it because it just a beautiful shape.

It's a car you love to watch, you know, just cut it just makes you feel good. You can take this thing to seven grand, it's bulletproof. The people love this guy, I think, this way. You know, there's been a lot of sports cars here, we've got the McLaren F1, the P1 and the Ford GTI and the career G.T., but you never forget your first love. And that's what this one was for me.

This is a car that really does for me. It's just so much fun to drive. It's so exciting. It makes all the right noises. Let's just say you never forget your first love. This is one of the first cars we did when I got this website. But we did it back in the old format and it was only about four minutes long. So we want to just come back 15, 16 years later and show you what it's really like.

So I hope you enjoy this piece. And the statue is great fun for me. And we'll see you guys next week.