Vintage radiator seals the deal between Leno, warplane museum
After getting help from Lancaster experts, comedian happy to return the favour
Word was out. An American celebrity collector was looking for a vintage aircraft part, a Northstar horseshoe radiator to be precise, one that works with a Second World War-era Merlin aircraft engine.
It didn’t take long for the search to reach the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton. Merlin engines, after all, are what power the museum’s famous Lancaster bomber.
Museum marketing manager Al Mickeloff passed word onto chief engineer Jim Van Dyk. He had a dubious response: “Those are rare as hens’ teeth.”
Sure enough, Van Dyk stumbled upon one the very next day.
It was sitting on the shelf of another collector, a friend of the museum. News of the discovery was sent through a middleman. Negotiations had just started over price when Mickeloff received a surprise phone call.
It was Jay Leno, former longtime host of “The Tonight Show” and an avid collector of vintage cars and motorcycles. Leno was the hitherto anonymous American celebrity.
Leno’s expansive “Big Dog Garage” in Burbank, Calif., holds a huge private collection that includes 160 cars and 130 motorcycles. It’s not open to the public, but you can see it on his CNBC series “Jay Leno’s Garage,” which returns for a third season June 28 at 9 p.m.
Leno likes working with Merlins. He has three of them, one in a 1932 Rolls-Royce and another installed on a Rolls frame with a Bentleystyled body on it. Leno is currently rebuilding the third Merlin on a trailer in his “garage.” That’s why he needed the Northstar horseshoe radiator.
“It’s just a display engine. It’s fun to fire it up,” Leno explains when reached on the phone from Los Angeles. “They are magnificent things to see when they run. This is what people did before Netflix, you work on stuff. You build things or you preserve history. It’s one of those things where you either get it or you don’t. I don’t play golf.”
So back to that phone call Leno made to Mickeloff about the price of the Northstar horseshoe radiator. At first, Leno was happy to just shoot the breeze with Mickeloff, talk about the museum and vintage aircraft parts. After about 15 minutes, they got down to brass tacks.
Mickeloff said the museum didn’t need cash for the radiator. He had a better idea. The museum had a charity auction coming up in September. How about if one of the auction items was a flight with Jay Leno on the Lancaster?
Hmmm. Leno had a tight schedule and doubted if it could be done.
Leno had a better idea. How about auctioning off two tours of Leno’s Big Dog Garage. It would be a vintage car buff’s dream and probably fetch a king-size price, the sort of thing that would attract bids from all over North America. If the winning bidders are lucky and plan their trip carefully, they might even meet the great comedian himself.
Deal done. The museum has a choice auction item and Leno now has his Northstar horseshoe radiator. Last week, he and his mechanics were in the process of installing it on the trailer that houses his rebuilt Merlin.
“We’re going to shoot a video of the thing when it’s done and put it on my website,” Leno says. “It’s great fun to help them promote their museum. We’ve done a lot of things like this.”
The auction will take place Sept. 23 at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum and will be limited to 800 with tickets at $100 per person, or a table of eight for $750. A dinner, provided by Michelangelos, and entertainment will be included in addition to the live, international auction for the top items.
Other auction items include tickets to the live taping final of NBC’s “The Voice” in Los Angeles, the actual pistons used in the Lancaster’s flight across the Atlantic to England, other Second World War memorabilia, skiing vacations, VIP passes to the Rogers Cup tennis tournament and Woodbine Raceway, the chance to tour Niagara in exotic cars, and more prizes still to be announced.
Meanwhile, Leno is modest about his extensive collection, which includes a huge variety of automobiles, some steam-powered and others turbine-powered.
“It’s just stuff that I like,” Leno says. “It’s not lifestyles of the rich and the famous. There are some things that are extremely valuable, but it’s mostly things that I like, Corvairs and broken airplane pieces … If you’re a car or motorcycle enthusiast, there are a lot of vehicles here that people have only heard about and never actually seen. That makes it kind of cool. It probably takes about 90 minutes to see. I may or may not be here. I certainly try to be.”
For more information about the auction, visit the website warplane.com.