The world adores matt hayward

Say what you will about the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. God knows Bill Hicks did. But if you haven’t seen Jay Leno’s Garage.com get right into it. This has to be the best adaptation of a TV style reality show to the internet I have ever seen period. Somehow you can’t help but feel that this garage will become his retirement fund - some kind of Universal Studios of cars for blokes. God I hope so. It would be about the only thing that would get me to California.

Each week Jay pulls out another car, motorbike or even plane from his warehouse sized garage. A good ninety percent of the toys that he shows you are his own, the rest (especially the planes) belong to other organisations or some car company wanting to pimp their wares. Thankfully he has a genuine enthusiasm for all kinds of cars. Whether it be a nineteen twenties steam powered vintage car of a sixties Honda convertible, his taste is nothing if not eclectic. He also truly appreciates the engineering and design and will talk in depth about the modifications done to each car.

My favourite feature of the series is Leno showing you all his paraphernalia from when the car was new and telling you all the foibles of that car. It’s all quite quirky and fun. Not just dyno charts and torque curves.

Also a key theme of the site is the environmental stuff. Leno proves that hybrids and electric cars are nothing new, and that if ethanol is good for anything, it’s good for performance. These are at least topical videos, and one thing’s for sure, you wont see Leno driving a Prius to placate the paparazzi. He truly knows his stuff.

If there was one down side to the site, it’s that it’s sponsored by GM. True to his word, Leno doesn’t mince words when it comes to criticising any of the cars featured. But you will see the same Buick ad with Tiger Woods trying to be Jackson Pollock about fifteen million times (the ad is played before each video). Little wonder they are losing money hand over fist when they sponsor a web site with the worlds most pre-eminent entertainers and can only find the ONE ad to repeat.

In all this reminds me of variety shows or something from the fifties where the sponsor would sit in the background amidst all the cool stuff. There’s no real gratuitous product placements or celebrity endorsements, just old fashioned car nerdedry! Hours of fun for any car, or especially bike nerd.

Anyway, here’s one of my favourite videos of Leno taking his Mazda Cosmo for a spin. There’s about a hundred more there to check out and a new one every week. So get stuck in!