The Time that Jay Leno Helped Me Sell my Car
In my line of work it pays to snoop around. Here in the Pacific Northwest there’s numerous dealers like me who specialize in funky old cars, and I’ll occasionally pop over to their websites to see what they have in stock. Last year I was checking out a dealer’s page when I saw something unusual. This dealer usually trades in motorcycles but sometimes he has a handful of collector cars scattered in to the mix. But what I saw on his site wasn’t just any collector car, it was a one-off creation by whom I deem the King of Automotive Art: Randy Grubb.
Randy Grubb is the most famous guy you’ve never heard of. He’s a master craftsman who creates world-class vehicles, birthed strictly from his imagination.
The Blastolene Special is a 21-foot, 9,500-pound scratch-built “car” powered by a 30-liter V12 engine that was sourced from a M47 Patton tank.
The DecoLiner is a double-decker motorhome that is driven from a flybridge on top. It took him 6,000 hours to build.
The DecoPods are 3-wheeled tilting axis bikes that come with matching helmets, all fabricated from riveted aluminum with copper embellishments. Six were built.
What I found for sale on that dealer’s website was probably the most practical Randy Grubb creation to date: a VW Type 2 bus that sported his signature aluminum bodywork at the rear, and was powered by a 160hp Subaru boxer engine that provided a 4X increase in grunt from what it would have originally been equipped with in 1959. He dubbed it the Volkstream.
This one I hadn’t seen before. I had already become familiar with most of Randy Grubb’s creations through the “Jay Leno’s Garage” series on YouTube, on episodes where Jay had invited Randy down to LA to showcase his latest work. Somehow I had missed this one. I did a quick search for “Volkstream” and quickly found the video, it was Google’s top result. Hmmmm.
Jay Leno’s YouTube channel has over 3 million subscribers. His Volkstream video had clocked in over 500,000 views. For a dealer like me, it’s very seldom that I get a chance to buy a car that half a million people had already marveled at, and one that Jay Leno himself had fawned over. I think that I had better buy this car, right away.
I immediately called the dealer who was selling it and found out that he and Randy are old friends, down south in Grants Pass, Oregon where Randy’s shop is based. The car was priced way up high, but we had a “between dealers” conversation and the price came down from crazy expensive to just regular expensive. I told him that I’d fly down tonight and be ready to buy the car the next morning.
That morning was frosty and clear as I waited outside of my motel to get picked up. Looking over to the freeway I saw an old VW bus exiting. Hey, that’s a weird coincidence. Wait, that’s it, that’s the Volkstream! They’re actually driving it? As it got closer I saw that it was Randy Grubb himself behind the wheel. Wow, what a way to start a morning. It was kind of like getting to ride shotgun in a Mustang with Carroll Shelby.
Back at the dealer’s store, the three of us made small talk for awhile, but Randy was mostly soft spoken, a change from the lively, humorous personality that I had seen on Jay Leno’s videos. Jay’s usual routine with him was to make mention of southern Oregon’s reputation for potent weed, connecting the dots to the outlandish designs that Randy dreams up. Being a good sport, Randy would take it in stride as he pointed out the particulars of his designs. But those videos always felt like a cheap shot to me, despite knowing that Leno obviously has a deep level of respect for him. Sitting next to Randy as I chatted with the dealer about our mutual connections, part of me started wondering about my own level of respect. I was obviously buying this car with the goal of reselling it at a profit. Today I was a merchant of the arts, not a patron. Maybe that’s why Randy wasn’t quite as outgoing in person as I expected him to be.
When my Bring a Trailer auction went live they posted a link to the Leno video right there alongside the one I had made. A fuller endorsement for a cool car couldn’t be asked for; Jay had done all the heavy lifting for me on this one. As expected, the Volkstream attracted a lot of attention and most of it was positive. When there were a few naysayers that couldn’t resist ragging on it I had no qualms about letting them know that their viewpoints were misguided. I wasn’t going to let them bad-mouth Randy Grubb.
It’s funny to me that people get twisted up when something falls outside of the margins that they’re comfortable with. Cezanne, Duchamp, Warhol, Rauschenberg, Koons - all of their early work was vilified before it came to be recognized and celebrated. Art that is polarizing is usually art that matters.
The Volkstream was sold to a large collection on the east coast. A few months later they made a video of their own. There it was, stored inside a huge facility with dozens of other collector cars stacked on top of each other. It kind of reminded me of that famous image from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. An artifact stored away.
I do hope it gets driven, and introduces more people to the world of Randy Grubb.