eBay find.

Most car enthusiasts would love to have a large garage, Leno-esque size, so that they could over time acquire their dream cars and collect memorabilia. If you had enough land you could choose to have a warehouse type garage, like an small aircraft hangar, with enough height to hang big stuff from the wall... yes, you know where I am going with this.

Just yesterday I stumbled across a story on Dragzine about Kenny Bernstein's famous '85 Ford Tempo Funny Car body for sale on eBay. It is being auctioned by the Darrel Gwynn Foundation and at the time that I am writing this, it still hasn't received any bids. It has an opening bid of $14,999 (pictured on the right) and if I had sufficient height in my garage, I'd seriously consider acquiring it.. or at least biding on it.

Kenny @1985 Nitro, at Milan, MI

Are you kidding? This is the very same car in which Kenny "the King" Bernstein won the 1985 NHRA Winston Drag Racing Series Funny Car Championship in. He also set an e.t. record of 5.569 seconds to the 1/4 mile mark (1,000 ft hadn't been introduced yet), won 38 elimination rounds, and scored eight national event wins combined in the NHRA and IHRA that year. As this all wasn't enough, he also won his sponsor's bonus race, the Big Bud Shootout, at Indianapolis. In those days, I always rooted for Kenny.

There is one catch though, the buyer must agree to use the body solely for display/collectable purposes and not be utilized in competition.

Click here to go to the eBay action page.

Thanks for reading.

Sources: Dragzine.com, Wikipedia
Photo credit: Michael Beach

Every car enthusiast's dream job

Sometimes you just have to be lucky, or at the right place at the right time!

The Jay Leno's Garage Show got it's start as Robert Angelo's last attempt to get a job. As he was making a sales pitch, which was quickly turning for the worse with Jay heading for the door, he blurted out...

"What if we create a show about your car collection?"

"You'd do that?" Leno said.

"Yes, absolutely!" replied Angelo.

"When can you start?"

And the rest is, as they say, history.


Thanks for reading.

Source: Jay Leno's Garage, Jalopnik.

Jay Leno's Garage

Did you know that Jay Leno, the late night talk show host of the "Tonight Show", has a passion for everything that has to do with automobiles. He has a huge garage somewhere in Burbank, Los Angeles, with a team of mechanics who maintain his collection. The garage has even its own website: Jay Leno's Garage

My personal connections are limited but I will attempt to get an invite to the Big Dog Garage. This may take a while, so in the meantime, I have written an excerpt from an article on Jalopnic, called "Burbank Envy: A glimpse inside Jay Leno's Garage".
They were lucky enough to snag a tour of Jay Leno's Big Dog Garage during the L.A. Auto Show some years ago.

Here follows a list of things seen there:
- a wall of Vincent motorcycles,
- the tank car,
- some of the best garage art known to man,
- a fully operational Tatra T87,
- a very large steam engine that used to belong to Thomas Edison - it still works,
- a water-jet cutter,
- ordinary, run-of-the-mill stuf, like a McLaren F1,
- and maybe Jay Leno himself.



To be honest, it was simply amazing. His collection of cars and bikes are exactly as we'd have them -running condition, nice without being too nice, and correctly restored. There was even a collection of art and assembled mobilia- the larger pieces were painted by NBC's set department - and was astonishing to say the least. The in-house restoration and service shop is complete enough to make your toes curl. And in the middle of it all is an ordinary, down-to-earth machine nut who just happens to be one of the most famous men in the world.

It is said the man sure knows how to collect cars.

Mr. Leno, I will be calling for an invite, on behalf of all the petrolheads of Curacao.

Source: Jalopnic.
Pictures courtesy of: barflyracers.com, jaylenosgarage.com