Jay Leno had a very special guest stop by his garage recently. Peter Mullin and his Pebble Beach-winning 1934 Voisin C-25 Aerodyne took the time to visit the comedian and car enthusiast for a brief spell. It’s no secret Leno is a fan of ’30s French vehicles, and the Aerodyne holds a special place in his heart. The vehicle was a marvel of innovation when it debuted, featuring a 3.0-liter inline six-cylinder sleeve-valve engine, a mechanized retractable hardtop sun roof and an interior that could have only been designed by a Frenchman.

Leno and Mullin spend plenty of time discussing the vehicle’s origin as well as Voisin’s colorful past. The engineer began his career designing aircraft, and claimed he was the first person in history to successfully engage in powered flight. He took off, flew and carefully landed his plane 18 months after the Wright brothers sailed along in Kitty Hawk, but received no recognition for his accomplishments. Interested in more? Hit the jump to check out the video.

Continue reading Jay Leno’s Garage welcomes 2011 Pebble Beach Best in Show winner

Jay Leno’s Garage welcomes 2011 Pebble Beach Best in Show winner originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 29 Dec 2011 19:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s really no website we like better than Bring A Trailer. In fact, when Congress passes the Stop Online Piracy Act and the corporations shut down everything on the Internet except WhiteHouse.gov, we’re probably going to be more upset at losing BaT than our own jobs.

So we’re stoked about this latest offering from the same guys who fill our e-mail inboxes with automotive dreams for sale every day: The BaT Garage. This is not some virtual garage hosted on an Internet server in an office park in Nebraska, but a real facility, with mechanics and tools and grease and oil and all the smells you associate with such. It’s located in Hayward, CA, and here’s the best part: You can store your own car there and let the staff take care of it for you.

While basic pricing runs between 0-0 per month, BaT will also offer additional services like airport pickup, a fueling service, delivery and even detailing. The operation is being run by Virtuoso Performance, whose resume includes supporting 28 cars at this year’s Monterey Motorsports Reunion. We can’t wait to see the BaT Garage in person, and we have to ask, is it too early to talk about franchising opportunities?

Bring a Trailer branches out, launches garage and storage service originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 01 Dec 2011 12:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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One of our all-time favorite concept car from Ford remains the GT90. As a modern interpretation of the Ferrari-besting GT-40, the GT90 offered all of the early ’90s angles we could stand along with a 750-horsepower V12 engine and a theoretical top speed of 235 miles per hour.

This is the kind of machine that middle-school day dreams are made of, and now Adam Pintek has set out to build a GT90 of his very own from scratch. Technically, the vehicle is simply a supercar with a striking resemblance to the old FoMoCo concept, but when Pintek is done, he should have a vehicle capable of besting some of the world’s most legendary machines.

Over the past four years, Pintek has already hashed out around 80 percent of the body using molds designed to mimic the original design of the GT90, and he’s currently partnered with a Formula race car builder to produce the chassis. The designer has chosen to forsake the big V12 for a forced-induction 6.2-liter V8. With two turbos serving up plenty of boost, Pintek is aiming for a whopping 1,000 horsepower. The mid-mounted engine will be bolted to a six-speed manual transmission that puts power to the rear wheels.

Pintek says that he hopes to see the vehicle in the final stages of development next two years. We can’t wait.

Man building Ford GT90 concept car homage in his garage originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 04 Oct 2011 12:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For years, I never knew how the story ended. I’ve taken many hours of enjoyment reading the fictional exploits of Gus Wilson and his Model Garage in my collection of vintage Popular Science magazines, but this one from July 1968 has left me hanging. The mystery of how “Gus Has An Argument With The Brass” ends is finally solved. No, I didn’t find the missing page that has vexed me for twenty years, but I have discovered I’m not the only one who loves these tales of diagnostic derring-do.

The Gus Project, put together by Mike Hammerberg, Don Miller and the flying typist fingers of Mary Viramontes, has archived all 529 stories online for easy searching and, most importantly, reading. The tricks and techniques chronicled by “author” Martin Bunn (a nom de plume for several writers over the years) may not be fully modern, since Gus hasn’t appeared in PopSci since 1970, but many of them are still useful. Learning the fine art of diagnostics at the elbow of a master, fictional or not, is a fulfilling way to while away the hours, and thanks to modern technology, you won’t have to leaf through musty, silverfish-infested pages. Pull up a chair and a tablet and lose yourself in nostaglia while learning a thing or two.

Classic Gus and the Model Garage stories indexed and posted online originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 09 Sep 2011 08:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It would be great to have a garage so large that entire sections were devoted to specific makes or models. Jay Leno has such a place, and, as befitting one of the best-known car junkies in the world, one section of his Big Dog Garage is home to nothing but Duesenbergs.

In case you’re not familiar with the marque, the Duesenberg was (and still is by some) regarded as the absolute pinnacle of automotive engineering. One vehicle in particular has an interesting story, as it was discovered unrestored in a Manhattan garage. Suffice it to say – and you knew this was coming, right? – it’s a Duesy.

This 1931 Duesenberg Model J was parked in New York City with just a few thousand miles on the odometer. The original owner’s son attempted to restore the car sometime in the 1950s, but the car was returned to its parking spot, and left to rot. After that, Leno became the second owner when he acquired the car in 2005.

It may have come to him as the last original owner, unrestored Duesy, but per Jay, the car was too trashed to be left in that condition. So, the Model J underwent a complete restoration, and is now in better shape than when it was originally parked in that Manhattan garage. Click past the jump to learn more about the car, and how Leno’s team brought it back to life.

Continue reading Last original owner, “unrestored” Duesenberg checks into Jay Leno’s Garage

Last original owner, “unrestored” Duesenberg checks into Jay Leno’s Garage originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 17 Jun 2011 19:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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