If you don’t know by now that comedian and late night talk show host Jay Leno is a car collector extraordinaire, then we hope the alien probing wasn’t too painful and welcome you back to planet Earth. The great thing about Leno is that he’s not just some rich guy who throws money at the latest horsepower-soaked auction queen to pad his collection. The man knows and loves machines, and works on everything he owns, from Stanley Steamer to Fiat Topolino.
His latest acquisition is a 1965 Honda SM600, which, under his care, promptly underwent a meticulous frame-off restoration with the help of Brian Baker of Formula H Motoworks. “If this had ‘Porsche’ written on it, it’d be worth $250,000, but because it’s Honda, for some reason they don’t get the respect they deserve,” spake His Chinliness. Word up, Mr. Leno. If you’ve never heard a Honda S-car revving to its 9,500rpm redline through a Flowmaster during a fly-by, you need to drop everything and watch this video on Jay Leno’s Garage. It’s absolute music.
Thanks to dear reader tkmedia for the tip.
that sound. OH that sound!
i’m no expert, but it sounds an awful lot like the RA272 and RA273 F1 cars.
Beautiful, isn’t it? 🙂
You can hear more of the RA272 here.
It was an honor to build Jay’s S600 engine for him! Four days start to finish! It’s a pleasure to hear Jim Hall say, “And it just works like a Swiss watch.” Thanks for the continued support, guys.
Hi Brian, sorry you missed out on the JCCS as a result. We have utmost faith in your abilities and if we ever put together that dream garage of ours, we know exactly who to contact for the S600 restoration!
I bought a 1969 Datsun 1600 in 1981 and loved that car! It was silver with a wide black stripe down the middle and got attention everywhere I went. After learning how to tune the double carb set up I was good to go, but that was a learning curve. I crashed it in ’82 and sold it to a guy in downtown LA that was a Datsun roadster parts house, and I regret that til this day. I wish I still had that car!
I recently bought a 2008 Mazda MX-5 Grand Touring in Sunlight Silver and that car does bring it all back, and in more ways. This roadster rocks and does remind me alot of that Datsun 1600 in many ways, but in a more refined way. Much more power and much better handling, but I would love to get my hands on another 1600 or 2000.
It’s never too late, Scott! They aren’t too rare… yet.