Jay Leno's Merlin

Worth a look on JayLeno’sGarage is his tour around the Collings Foundation Fleet. Lucky chap takes a Flight in the P51C too !

I’ve known him for years, sold him some magnetos for that car & it was another friend of mine who rebodied the rear half of the Merlin car. While he doesn’t have any Ferraris, he does have 4 Lambos.
He actually has 2 cars with aero engines, the other is a Hispano with a V8 from a Spad.
There’s also a tank Meteor engine sat in his shop.

Yes, he really knows his stuff. On his website, he posts weekly videos about some of his cars. He speaks “off the cuff” and talks about the marques history, technical features and what they’re like to drive. Then he gets in the drivers seat and takes views along for a ride.

He has a huge collection of vintage bikes as well as vintage stock and modified cars. Favorites in his collection are steam cars and a McClaren F1.
He’s not into the “latest and greatest” fad, I don’t believe he has (or wants) a Ferrari. In other words, he’s no poser.

He get involved in the cars restoration…he’s hand’s on, but I don’t think he does a lot of restoration work himself due to his schedule.
But he’s far more than a guy who just writes cheques.
He’s back on the Tonight Show five nights a week and spends weekends doing comedy shows across the country. He’s said that he only spends his comedy show money, his TV money stays in a bank.

Seems like a great guy.

What I enjoy about him is the fact he shares his collection. A lot of rich guys lock stuff up and rarely drive them or show them, he’s just the opposite. His attitude is restore them, drive them, re-restore as necessary. But drive them.

He’s like a guy in a local car club…except he’s famous, very rich and has 100+ cars and bikes.

Until your post I only vaguely knew of him as a US chat show host. What a collection and what an endeavour. He must be one of the foremost individual restorers and collectors in the world.