The Missing Talbot-Lago | Jay Leno's Garage

Welcome to the episode of Jay Leno's Garage. The car featuring today, well I guess it's kind of automotive royalty. This was one of the premier cars, certainly the French coach building era, Taubo Lago GSL. Taubo Lago is one of those storied brands that goes back to just about the beginning of the automobile. It was Durac early in the turn of the last century. It was Taubo Durac and then got bored and sold, which brings up to this point a man named Anthony Lago, Antonio Lago. He was British and Italian. He took the company over in about the mid-30s sometime. You know, one of these gopher broke all the time, never had any money, but built some brilliant cars, some brilliant Grand Prix cars, six-cylinder engine, dual cam, not overhead cam, dual cam. I'll explain that in just a minute. And this was the swan song. He was broke, the company was broke by the time they built these. This was, I think it's safe to say, a pre-war type car built after the war. By that I mean the classic coach building, a lot of wood in the doors. And how I came to find this, I knew a gentleman, he was 98 years old, and he invited me down to look at his cars. And I saw this one, he thought I was kind of interested in it, and I politely said, you know, if you ever decide you do want to sell something, I'd be interested in this one. And he said, well, I need to come to your garage and see your stuff, you know, before I decide whether you should. All right, I get that, I'm the same way, you know, I know somebody's going to take care of it. And he came here and he was suitably impressed, so he let me buy it. And he, sadly, he passed away soon after that. He was all set to take this up to Pebble Beach. Now it's interesting, he had fascinating cars. He had a Lamborghini Miura he bought new, 900 miles. He had an ATS, the same thing, eight, nine hundred miles. Jaguar, XK1, all the great cars of the 50s and 60s he owned, and he would drive them and park them. And he went to France to try and find one of the teardrop cars. He couldn't find one. He found this. He bought it in the early 60s, 1964, 1965. He had it flown from France to LAX. He went to the Department of Motor Vehicles, got a one-trip permit, drove it from LAX to his warehouse in Orange County, and parked it. And it sat there from 1965 until I pulled it out last year. To say it needed a fair amount of re-commissioning, that's what they always say in auctions, you know, when a car is original, might need some slight re-commissioning. Well, it just needed re-commissioning. He drove it from LAX to his warehouse with a full tank of gas, and it sat for, whatever, 60 years, just about, with this full tank of gas and oil and everything. We got it here, put it up on the lifts. Let me see the gas tank. I said, it looks good, not a lot of rust, but my hand went right through it, and there's just tons of dirt and rust came out of it. Well, here, here's what the tank looked like. You see, we cut it open. You can see how rotted it was inside. We tried to use as much of the original metal as we could, the filler neck and some of the other pieces, but we had to fabricate a whole new tank. It looks exactly like the original, so you can't tell. The brakes were a nightmare because you have steel brake lines in this, and I had never seen brake fluid, what it looks like after sitting for 60 years, but literally turns to a gel. Luckily, we had a transmission flush type machine that heats up this liquid to boiling, and it just keeps forcing it through, and we managed to clean out all the lines, but that took weeks to get all the lines clean, and of course, master cylinder had to be re-sleeved, and you're not going to find another one because this is a unique vehicle, but as you can see, we got it together. This is original paint, original interior. We have not touched that. We trued up the wheels. This is interesting. This is 1952, 1953. France did not have the technology to curve glass like they did at General Motors, so they made this out of plexiglass. They wanted to have curved glass. Carlos de Lesse designed this body. Another interesting gentleman. I tried to find a picture of this guy. It doesn't exist anywhere, but he was a very gifted designer. I think it's a beautiful car. It's just fascinating. It's a full-size automobile. It's got a front seat and a back seat. The T26 Grand Sports were the legendary ones. This is, as I said, the company's going out of business by the 50s. He took one of the old Record chassis and shortened it. I think it's 110-inch wheelbase. This has 220 horsepower. It has Webber's on it now. This car was raced. It says competition here, but this, I know for a fact, this particular script is off of Delahaye. So somebody raced this car. The other unusual thing, it has a manual gearbox. These never came with manual gearboxes. They had what you call a Wilson pre-selector, which is exactly what it says. I think Auburn had one, and Accord had one, rather. It's a thing where you pull away in first gear with a clutch. Then as you're driving, you move the lever to second gear. Then when you want to change gears, like the Ferret tank we had a couple months ago, you hit the pedal, and boom, it shifts automatically. You pre-select each gear. It works quite well, but it was heavy, so it made it tough to race these because of the weight penalty. Somebody converted this to a manual transmission. I have contacted Peter Larson, the guru of these cars, and this car is a missing car. I think they only built 19 of these, something like that. This is the only one that is unaccounted for. He sent me an ad for a manual transmission. He sent me a picture of this car. This car was used by the French magazines to road test, some other facts like that. Other than that, it's sort of a lost car. I assume somebody put a gearbox in it. It's not American. I think it's Portemuson. I hope I'm saying that right. That's the French gearbox that Chrysler used in the 50s, but it looks like a factory job. It doesn't look like a hot rod. Somebody raced this car because even the Weber carburetors that are on here, I think this conversion must have been done at the factory because all the dashboard knobs and the shift knob match. It's not like this has a big white ball or something on it for a shift knob, so that's unusual too. Somebody wanted one of these with a manual gearbox, which I must prefer. The Wilson pre-selector is interesting, but it's fun to be able to shift gears yourself. It's probably heavier than it needs to be. The chassis was not light. This is not like the T26 chassis that was used in the pre-war cars. Those were a little shorter wheelbase and faster. Lago had to go with what he had. I think he did a fine job. This is what you would call a grand touring car in the style of a DB5 or DB6. As I said, extremely fast for the time. The XK120 had 160 horsepower. This is 220, so there you go. Right there, that makes it pretty quick. These were just crazy expensive. I'm not sure what the analogy would be, but whatever normal cars were, this was way more, put it that way, way more than Aston Martin or any of those cars because they were hand-built. I mean, the factory looked like something out of World War I or certainly pre-war. By the 50s, everybody's getting modern machinery and coming back, and Lago had no money. He just had to go with what he had. The old guys, boom, boom with a hammer and all that. The doors were a bit heavy, so they pulled on the hinges. We pulled the doors and we replaced all the wood in here. There's an awful lot of wood in this car, so that does make the car heavy as well. Let me show you the book I'm talking about here. This is the car from Paris. That's the name of this book. Peter Larson and Ben Erickson. This is the ultimate book on these. When you have a car like this, we only built 19 of them, it's not going to be a bestseller. It's a real labor of love to do these kind of books. They're expensive to produce, but believe me, you don't get rich doing them. I just want to thank him for doing it and just being historians and saving history because that's real important. Somebody right now is writing the book on the mid-engine Corvette and all the cars that are for a hundred years from now people are going to want to know. For the 19 of us that have these cars, this is the Bible. I'll show you some of the pieces, some of the things on this car once I open the hood. It's two volumes. One is the history and the other is the cars. There's detailed shots of the engine and how it all goes together and how it works and sort of the story of a Lago who was a bit of a, I wouldn't say a flim-flam guy, but he could charm his way into things. What happened was he managed to get control of the Wilson pre-selector transmission company and he put it in every one of these that was built. Cabo Lagos had the Wilson pre-selector gearbox because he made money on each one. So somebody obviously changed this and as I said it looked like a factory job but even he didn't know because it's just no history on this car. Let's open the hood up. I'll show you the engine. Now remember this is not a restored car. This is just a preserved car so it's not as shiny as some of the other engine compartments. A six-cylinder engine, 4.5 liter which is huge by European standard. Well it's pretty big here too, a good size motor. Once the socialist government took over in France that pretty much ruined the coach building industry because the French, I've said this before, Germany was the birthplace of the automobile but France was the where all the original ideas System Panhard and all that kind of thing came from. After the war the government decided no no I'm not going to build any fancy cars. Any engine more than 2.7 liter will be taxed literally off the planet. So consequently these big engine monsters that were hand-built they just couldn't be sold at any sort of practical price. They were just taxed ridiculously high and there weren't any customers for them and that was the end of that. But this is the last of that era. This is the last sort of last stand for Tabalago and you can see all the pre-war stuff. Look at this you have a crank here, this here, so you can hand crank the engine. Not so much to start it although I suppose you could but mostly just set timing and whatnot. This looks like it's dual overhead cam. It is not. These are rockers under there. These are just valve covers. You have two cams down in the block. Let me show you the picture. Here's the pictures in the book that will explain it to you. As I said this book does a wonderful job explaining how this engine works. It's similar to I think the Riley in England used the same sort of deal. Two camshafts low in the block, short push rods, hemi head which is pretty cool with central plug position. So it's an impressive motor. I mean by the 50s the Italians were coming up with all sorts of interesting stuff so he was soldiering on with this old-fashioned design but very robust motor. You have an aluminum head on it. You know I've overheated this thing twice. Once when a water pump, once when the crankshaft pulley broke and I didn't realize it and then the other day a fan you know a fan belt broke the other day on this and we were using the original fan belt so I wanted to get ready for today's shoot so let me take it around the block so boom out in the freeway okay now I'm stuck. So I called George our chief mechanic. You know George is great. He'd been working on the car and then he said wait a minute I think there's a fan belt in the trunk. We opened the trunk and there it was a brand new 1965 fan belt still in the original wrapper and it's on there now. I'm gonna replace it this afternoon and get a better one and you can see somebody has put all this writing in here in French. It's just what kind of oil to use, what weight and whatnot. Look at these Weber's. If anybody knows that model of Weber let me know because I don't know what it is. Somebody put these on. Normally this would have Solexes on it, three of them, but somebody put these Weber's on to go racing with and as I said this car is really really fast. Here's your plate right here with your engine numbers on it. Stock radiator. Obviously we replaced the fan with this. It just happened to be red. I couldn't get one that was just standard gray but everything else is exactly as you know. It's so funny when we got this engine it had been sitting and we tested compression it was zero. It was like okay we're gonna tear this whole engine down. So we pulled the spark plugs and we filled the cylinders with a combination of acetone and ATF, automatic transmission fluid, and let it sit for a week, 10 days, and it came back. 125 in every cylinder which is not the end of the world but it's good and it's fine now. It was just parked. It wasn't pickled. Nobody put it away up on blocks you know. Obviously we got new tires but the originals held air. They're 18s which are hard to find. What else is under here? We got a modern Optima battery that kind of gives it away but everything is exactly as it should. I mean it's a time capsule. You know this car is so unusual. I believe it's the only GSL, the L stands for long, with the original bumpers because these were just abandoned on the streets and said to use car lots when they no longer had any value in the mid 60s early 70s. So you can't even get bumpers. Even the ones at Pebble Beach don't have the bumpers on them. So I think this is the only original car. It might be the only one left with original paint, original interior, original bumpers, and still has of course the original engine. What else can I show you on here? I have fuse boxes up here. Come on let's go around to the rear of the vehicle. Lots of aluminum and steel. Come on to the back. It's kind of cool the way the spare tire is. See that fits in there. These straps hold the tire. Right here you have your gas cap is here. Protects it. Then you have a piece of leather that's supposed to go over there. But yeah pretty good size trunk because the tire takes up the whole thing. That'll give you some idea. And the fan belt was under there which is kind of cool. As I said these bumpers are really hard to find. They just don't exist anymore. It's so funny to think that these cars are just literally thrown away. Because in France gasoline taxes are so high. Something like 4.5 liters. And this gets horrible gas mileage. I don't know what it is but it's I think it's the same as like a Chrysler Hemi. It's like probably 9 to 12 something like that. Just big motor, big pistons. And it's not like a modern engine which is efficient you know. Love the taillights. Love the reflectors. I would love to hear from anybody who has information on this on this gearbox. If you've dealt with these things before I'd like to know more. Come on let's let's show you the interior now. And you see you've got these door handles which are quite popular in the 50s. The Cunningham had this as well. We replaced all the wood inside here. Classic dashboard. Original leather. I'm trying to bring this leather back using hide food. The cool thing is it's real leather. It's not like modern leather. You know people use hide food on modern leather. It doesn't make any difference because it's all sealed. But this stuff really breathes gives off this aromatic smell. You've got a clock. Everything here is different. That's on. That's off. The exact opposite. You know French switch gear can be very confusing. But let's do the gear. You have a clock. All Jaeger instruments. Speedometer. You have your water temperature. You have a meter. Oil pressure. And gas gauge over there. That's the one I had to rebuild. French. Of course there's an ashtray. Horns are up here. There you go. Classics. I've seen this steering wheel before. I think Delahaye had it as well. It's odd. Clutch is way over here on this side. But plenty of headroom. Beautiful car to drive. Handbrake here. Advance and return on the ignition which is very unusual for a post-war car. Most cars were pretty much automatic advance and return by that time. What else? What else? I don't know. Maybe it's time to take it next door. Put it up on the lift and show you what it's like underneath. These are notorious and cold-blooded. There's no chokes on these Webers. There she is up on the lift. As you saw we utilize the old original tailpipe. We're trying to save as much metal as we could. As you see Jimmy did a great job fabricating this gas tank. All the original. We used as much original pieces as we could. This is original. He put all the the folds in there as they should be. Yeah he did a great job on that gas tank. See all these original pieces. We tried to save as much metal as we could. There's your rear end and of course you've got leaf springs back here. Massive hydraulic drum brakes as you can see on both wheels. Something not original but original to the car when I got it was this muffler here. Mitchell I don't know. It appears to be American. I don't know. It looks like we used to call a cherry bomb type muffler or it's a muffler at all really. Here's the gearbox. Okay I don't know what this gearbox is. I think as I said Portemuson. This looks like a factory installation to me. This does not look like it was done at some hot rod shop outside of Paris. I could be wrong. I don't know. I'm hoping maybe some buddy much smarter than I in Talbots could tell me this. I'm still learning on this car. It's only been we've only had it about a year and most of that time was spent getting it running. George has done a wonderful job on the engine. We've managed to save as many pieces as we could. There are some numbers there. Maybe somebody can tell you something. We've got coils up front. Independent suspension. I think these may have been the first pre-war cars to have independent front suspension. I'm not sure. Talbot as I said is an old company. Well here's an example of old school. Look at those lever type shocks up there in front. And you see you've got the big scoops for cool the drums. As you can see obviously new brake lines. You don't want to be that original. I mean cleaning these brake lines took weeks. Weeks of just soaking and cleaning and oh my god then running literally boiling hot fluid through to get them all back to original. But it would have been a herculean task to pull the steel brake lines out from inside the body and refabricate them. But these are all original exhausts. Had all original pipes here. I think this car was raced but I don't think it was driven a whole lot. As you can see it doesn't appear to have been in an accident or anything. All of this looks pretty good. The raccord chassis see drilled for lightness and shortened up a bit and he was out of money. Show what that's doing on there. It's supposed to be on there. Okay fix that a bit later. Still got the original shocks. So all right let's uh take it for a ride and see how she goes. There's something about these old girls I just find attractive. I just find them the handmade quality of it. And obviously we've long passed the day when hands make something better than machines but there's something about it. I just find intriguing hearing those carburetors suck air that way. Such a torquey motor. This engine got hot on me twice. As I said one time we broke the keyway on the on the crankshaft damper and harmonic balancer there rather and that just fell apart. So we had to make a new one of those. Got that going. Then for whatever reason we kept the 60 year old fan belt on there and that just I was on the highway yesterday and that just went into a million pieces. Then I started smelling oil coming through the floorboards. I go what's that? I thought maybe it was a fire. It just got so hot the oil was beginning to turn into white smoke. I guess what I like about these kind of cars is they're still mechanical. Human hands made it. Human hands can fix it. You know you get a modern car like a hyper car or something and a computer built it and a machine welded it and that's pretty much it. There's not much the human being can do. This is not a small car. It's probably about the size of a mustang I guess. With a back seat about as big as a mustang. Except you're shifting with your other hand. Being one of the last coach built cars to come out of France it's kind of interesting when you look at when you take the door apart you see the nails that they used. The kind of wood that they used. You had to be a carpenter to work on a car back in this day. The fact that it survived this well. I've got some books about the streets of Paris. I got it because it showed a lot of cool cars. You know parked on the streets during World War II and there's one or two of these and they were just old cars. That's all they were. You know nobody could afford to drive them. I do like the Wilson pre-selected gearbox but I think it's kind of neat that this is one of the well so far it's the only known one with a manual gearbox. I find it kind of fascinating that Peter Larson the author of the book was fascinated because this was an undiscovered car. Nobody knew where it went you know it was sold in 65 and never seen never written about never showed up on a car show so there are no pictures there are no anything. You know if you want to go to Peter's website uh here's his here's his uh here's his website up here. Check it out he's got a couple of other car books coming out as well. You know he he does just these fabulous books of all the great coach builders and uh just beautiful work. I highly recommend it. I hope to get him down here so I can take a ride in this thing and see what he thinks. Holds really strong. Those don't need attack because you've got such such torque and every gear. It's amazing how many brilliant engines were designed pre-World War II. You know the BMW 328 which also went the 8-liter Bentley, the Gutenberg, this motor. We here in America tended to look at it as a six-cylinder engine. It's nothing but a correlation to the V8 because V8s were cheap in America and in Europe the six-cylinder was like it was here. It was it was called the big block you know. Cool horn. Yeah this was a big fast touring car boy. The previous generation Grand Sport had more sporting pretensions than this one. The GSL. But still they're so rare to get anyone in the tree. It's an honor actually. I'm honored. The older gentleman used his name. I didn't ask the man. Funny he came. He looked at my cars. He said okay all right when I'm gone you can buy. These 18-inch tires flat spot pretty easy. They've got to drive a good 10 miles before the rubber gets soft enough to activate around again. I see why this car didn't have a radio. It's just he just enjoyed listening to the engine. That's a pretty fast car even by modern standards. It's just got so much torque. I think most people would think this was a V8 or riding in it for the first time and didn't know. People described Antonio Lago as a grease monkey and an engineer and I think that's something he would have been proud of actually. He really never had the finances to fund his projects properly so the fact he was able to build cars, win Grand Prixs, sell luxury automobiles is a testament to just his skill and kind of charming people. I mean you read the book and you realize oh some people didn't think a whole lot of them but this is one of the great cars. If the government of France hadn't cracked down it's interesting to see how big the French custom car industry could have remained. I mean they did such beautiful work it just was not feasible from a tax standpoint to build anything there because luxury cars were bourgeois and you know blah blah all that kind of stuff. They built smaller cars like little Renaults and the 2CV and all that kind of thing. So cars like this were just they just weren't welcome in France. You know the French government figured if you really wanted a car like this boy you were going to pay and pay and pay and that's pretty much what happened. They just wanted enough people around to keep them going. They made it. The engine hasn't been out of it the last 60 years that I know of and it's just the way it left the factory. You can't either get it or you don't. It's fun to save a piece of history, to preserve a piece of history. I mean this going down the highway in 1952 at 100 miles an hour was rocking. Just unbelievably quick by today's standards. The guys do those kind of books it just makes it easier to restore and find out exactly how they were supposed to be as opposed to what people thought and what they imagined. So Peter thank you very much and Mr. Erickson as well.