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Jay Leno’s Back In The Driver’s Seat

For more than two decades, Jay Leno drove a different car to work. That job, hosting NBC’s venerable “Tonight Show” in Burbank not far from his expansive Big Dog Garage, paid him more than enough to keep him in exotic sheetmetal. But where for many celebrities collecting cars is a mere scorecard of showbiz success, for Leno—whose pre-fame gigs included wrenching at a Boston-area garage—it’s the grounding end to his famous means.

“Look, I love this,” says Leno, 65, sitting at a messy desk inside one of three airplane hangars that house his dazzling assortment of some 140 cars and nearly 120 motorcycles, from turn of the 20th-century steam vehicles to the latest in exotic rockets. More museum than storage facility, cars are organized by make or nationality, often with accompanying advertisements and other related paraphernalia. (In one nook, there’s a movie-screen sized poster for a post-war Buick Roadmaster looming over an actual Buick Roadmaster.)

“Comedy is subjective. Some people think you’re hilarious and some people think you suck, and they’re both correct. But when something’s broken and you fix it, no one can say it’s not running,” he says, running a hand through his white mane. “Besides, when you work with your hands, you get an appreciation for how easy it is to make money in show business. I mean, you take a transmission out, your hands are all cut up, and maybe you make 80 bucks.”

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Leno is relaxed in this place, an unmarked facility by an airport runway. There are half a dozen guys in his employ who are busy working on many cars, ranging from a ‘70s Porsche 911 that needs a solid going through to what looks like a stunning shell of a Briggs Cunningham C-3 (”That was $15,000 new, in the early ‘50s,” Leno says, eyebrows arching) sports car. Keeping the men company are a dog and some of the most beautiful four-wheeled machines every manufactured, from a pride of Lamborghini Miuras to a squad of rakish Bugattis, from a Porsche Carrera GT that Leno topped 200 mph in to stately selection of Packards.

The cars’ owner is here daily when not on the road doing more than 100 stand-ups gigs a year, a routine he also kept up during his “Tonight Show” years. And soon he’ll head to Oslo, Norway, to host a Nobel Prize concert. Lazy, Leno is not.

In fact, he’s recently added a new if familiar job to the line-up as host of “Jay Leno’s Garage” on CNBC, an offshoot of the popular video-filled website by the same name. After dipping a toe in those cable waters in 2014, he returned with multiple episodes this fall (airing Wednesdays at 10 p.m.) and recently was asked to film 12 more shows that will appear in 2016.

The hour-long episodes are vintage Leno: straight-forward without taking themselves too seriously. He’s drag-raced with a pro, done donuts with fellow comedian Tim Allen, talked shop with Mario Andretti and even gotten to sit down with a very reclusive auto enthusiast.

“I called up Francis (Ford Coppola, director of “The Godfather” trilogy, “Apocalypse Now” and other classics of American cinema) knowing that he’d never done the ‘Tonight Show’ or anything like that, and just said, ‘This is about cars and motorcycles. No show biz, no personal life. Just cars and bikes.’ And he said, ‘Fine, I’m in.’”

With that, Leno and his small crew were off to the director’s winery in Napa, where they talked like old friends. “Well, he’s old school Italian, and I’m Italian, so in many ways it was like talking to my uncles,” Leno says with a laugh. “Did you know that his father played in Henry Ford’s orchestra, and he was named after Ford? He loves cars. He made ‘Tucker’ after all. He has a few of those, some Citroens, an EV-1 (electric car), a Packard. He told me about winning some early (film) award, and racing out and buying an Alfa (Romeo). I really enjoyed him.”

Another forthcoming episode features jazz legend Herbie Hancock, a man who admittedly isn’t associated with sports cars. But then again, think about it—Hancock was close with trumpet genius Miles Davis, who famously raced around in his personal Ferrari. Turns out, when Hancock first made decent cash from the success of his indelible 1962 hit, “Watermelon Man,” he scooped up a new Shelby Cobra. “And he still has it!” booms Leno. “There aren’t many original Cobra owners, so we talked about why he’s kept it so long.”

Leno says the informal nature of the brotherhood of car aficionados often means he doesn’t bother with publicists and appeals directly with a celebrity he wants for the show. He’s currently got a call in to Tom Cruise, a car, motorcycle and airplane fanatic who’s spent some time at Big Dog Garage in the past. “We won’t talk religion (Scientology) or politics, just car stuff,” he says.

Leno jokes that his show has a broader appeal that other cable car programs on the air today “because we’re just having fun and learning things, not throwing wrenches at each other,” a reference to programming focused on the real-or-faux drama surrounding fast-paced automotive restoration projects. But Leno’s got another advantage, as evidenced by his Coppola “get”—because of who he was in the television firmament for so long, and because his love for things mechanical is so genuine, he could well have a second career as a chronicler of the people and things of a dying automotive age.

Put that to the comedian and he shrugs. “You have this debate about every 10 years. ‘Cars are on the way out!’ It’s just changing, that’s all. Personally I love the idea of autonomous cars.” He pauses for a beat, smiles. “Most cars are self-driving now anyway, people are putting lipstick on, eating, I’m not sure how they’re being driven.”

One of the newest additions to his fleet is a Tesla Model S with the outrageous performance package option that causes Leno’s famous chin to drop. “The car is insane, something like 2.8 to 60 (mph). It costs you like a buck-fifty in electricity. And the Autopilot features (which can keep the car in a lane) are great.”

Leno waves over in the general direction of the Verdugo Mountains that flank Burbank, which today rise majestically out of this concrete plateau. “I’m one of these guys who thinks engineers will save the world. When I moved here in the ‘70s, you couldn’t see those mountains. There were many days a year you couldn’t go outside (due to the smog). That’s progress. Sure, there’s work to be done, but let’s not forget that.” Another beat for a joke. “With a lot of these modern cars, if you drove them into a garage and shut the door you might starve to death before the car (emissions) killed you.”

There doesn’t seem to be a topic Leno won’t confront, perhaps happily so now that he’s not in the public spotlight as much.

He says he both understands but laments the culture’s growing adherence to political correctness (”I’d make a joke about gay fashion, not gay rights, and the next thing you know it’s ‘Leno goes on homosexual rant’”); thinks the reality show culture has already jumped the shark (”I heard a star of one of those housewives shows say, ‘I’m sick of being famous,’ and my thought was, it should be a very short illness”); and occasionally takes in the work of his late night successors while marveling at how hard the job has gotten (”I love watching (”Tonight Show” host) Jimmy (Fallon), especially these viral videos he’s so good at, but in my day it was all about tuning into the monologue to hear what the topic of the day was”).

One aspect of today’s age visibly cracks him up. “Smartphone culture is amazing. Today, a kid can have a girl text him a naked picture of herself. Well in my day, you had to actually go to the girl’s house when her parents weren’t home. Then somehow convince her to take her clothes off. Then take that film three towns over to a photomat where people don’t know your parents, then get the film back only to have black bars over the interesting stuff.”

At this point, Leno’s laugh has veered into a giggle. “We had to go places in reality, not in virtual reality.” And that gets back to cars, and why Leno isn’t still merely tinkering with them daily, but also trying to pass on that passion through a medium he knows well, the ultimate merger of vocation and avocation.

“When I was young, cars took you places. They taught you things. They represented freedom,” he says. “And I guess I’ve never fallen out of love with that feeling.”