A few years back we were fortunate enough to spend a day hanging out at the amazing and very active three-building compound that makes up Jay leno’s Garage. The buildings are filled to overflowing with exotic cars and motorcycles of every description and the veteran comedian and dedicated gearhead is a welcoming host if ever there was one. Folks familiar with Jay’s regular web broadcasts will know that he’s a lifelong fan of cafe racers, having developed a love of heavily modified streetbikes in the low bars high-performance vein while still a kid growing up in Upstate New York. Among the breathtaking collection of British, European, American and Japanese cafe bikes in Jay’s workshop are several restored Vincent V-twins. Though a couple of the British classics have been restored to factory-fresh condition, Jay is especially proud of his ultra-rare Elgi Vincent specials. These handbuilt customs were designed by Swiss motorcycle racer an gifted engineer Fritz Egli who devised his own lightweight racing chassis for the air-cooled motors.
Jay explained that soon after appearing in his very first Hollywood movie- 1978s “American Hot Wax,” he returned home with enough cash bulging in his jeans pocket that he decided it was time to purchase his first Vincent Rapide. As a kid who played sandlot baseball near his New Rochelle home and told CRM that he vividly remembered a neighbor who would roar past the ballfield on a big, black Vinent motorcycle. Jay phoned his mother and asked if the neighbor was still around and still riding his Vincent in the neighborhood. “He had gotten older and wasn’t riding much anymore, but the guy still had his bike, so first thing I did was fly back home and buy it from him,” jay recalled fondly.
The Vincent wasn’t the only one of the approximately 300 bikes Jay owns that he could recall impressive origin stories for. In fact, while visiting the garage, we heard several more tales, along with some funny anecdotes of how Jay, like many of us, is careful to hide his latest two and four-wheeled purchases from his longtime partner. “That’s why I buy some bikes two or three at a time,” he explained with a chuckle.” That was when she walks in here and asks where the 1959 Triumph Bonneville came from, I can point to all three of them and say, ‘those bikes? Honey, don’t you remember me buying those old wrecks for next to nothing and restoring them over the years.” Fun times with a funny, passionate motorcycle guy.
