The Car That Raced Around the World?! Jay Drives the Thomas Flyer | Jay Leno’s Garage

Jaylon's Garage. Today we're being visited by true automotive royalty. This is the 1907 Thomas Flyer. This is a car that won the New York to Paris race. Not car like it, the exact car. It really was one of the most famous cars in the world. There's a wonderful story that goes with it. Bill Harrah, of course, from Harrah's Museum, he acquired the car in the 60s and tried to keep it as 100% original as he could. It's a pretty amazing story. A man named George Schuster, as I remember. There used to be a show in the United States called I've Got a Secret, Peacock Pond with a Secret. And this George Schuster guy comes out, I guess it was about 1957, and he said, oh, I drove the car that won the race and then the whole story on it. That's the guy. That's the car. I remember seeing that, you know. This comes to us from the National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada, which is really Bill Harrah's collection. Bill was probably the most famous car collector in the world. Certainly most prolific. 1,500 cars he had. It was unbelievable. And he just loved transportation and especially enjoyed historical cars, cars that were relevant. And this is one of the greatest cars of all time. Let's see Phil McDougall. Phil, come on in. You're the curator, the head guy. What's the exact title? I'm the president. President. Yes, of course. The president of the auto museum. And it is a great museum. If you're ever in Reno, it's really worth the trip because I worked for Bill Harrah as a young man. I was just starting out as a comedian. And we talked cars and he knew I liked cars. So we got to be good friends. Yeah. Wonderful guy. Sadly, he died at age 66. And of course, when I was when I was like 26, I was like, well, that seems about right. You know, when you're a kid, you go somebody's 26. Well, he lived longer. Now we're there. Yeah, I know. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And he didn't just save special cars like Ferrari's. He liked Franklin's. He liked, you know, the cars that sort of America grew up on the Model T's, all of that weird one off cars that nobody's ever heard of. And that's the great thing about the museum. They have so many of those there. And this was a car that nobody else thought was worth preserving at the time. But he did. He got it. What? Sixty four. Sixty four. And for a few years before that, I had a couple of temporary homes, even including a junkyard, almost a junkyard before he got a hold of it and did the story and restored it in 1907. The automobile was coming into its own and they were going to do around the world race. Correct. Yeah. And America did not enter it at the time. There's nobody in America is interested. But I think didn't Teddy Rose at all. So what? Why isn't why? Why aren't we involved in this? He's the one that got involved. That's right. Back in 1907, they said they're going to have a race in 1908. The New York Times and a publication in Paris, France said they're going to have this competition. It was more of they didn't believe the cars really were sturdy. They're more for Richmond, like a novelty that weren't reliable. Teddy Roosevelt came in. We were going to have someone to represent us. And he says, I think we will. Yeah. Call Mr. Thomas up. And a couple of weeks before they took this right out of the showroom floor and brought it up to New York Times. Now, Teddy Roosevelt was the first president to ride in a car. I think Howard Taft was the first president to drive a car. But Teddy Roosevelt was the first. And why did he call Thomas? Because there were Pierce Arrows. There were plenty of other cars around. Was he a personal friend or no? Actually, the story was that there was a few people considering doing it, but they weren't sure the financial implication. And then Thomas needed a little publicity. So he came in at the end and said, I'm going to do it. But a lot of the cars, you know, they participated a year before the Peking to Paris race in Germany and Italy. They all had people that cars that were all modified. Right. This came right out of the showroom floor, more of a promotional aspect. That's right. Because I remember, was it called the Thomas Flyer from the beginning or only after the race they changed it to Flyer? It was just Thomas Flyer from the beginning. From the beginning. OK. So this is the way cars are built at the time. Massive engine, over 500 cubic inches. 571 cubic inches. It was a beast. It was an animal. And just a torque monster. Chain drive to the rear wheels, as you can see here. You fill this with oil and it drips oil on the chain, which of course gets thrown all over the place. Very fancy back then. Before 1907, most people never gone faster than 12 or 15 miles an hour. Whatever a horse could run, that was about it. And they weren't reliable either. And some people had ridden on trains, but those went at most 25 or 30 miles an hour. So the idea of something can go 50, 60. Oh, my God. And this was a fast car. It was really fast. I mean, just to pass the spec, I was in Buffalo just to see the plant, how they used to do it, to get up this hill, but at least get to at least 50 miles an hour on the straightway. I was there, another Flyer, a couple of years ago. We got up to 70 something. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. I was a little shaky. Well, Buffalo, I think, was the third wealthiest community in America at the time because all the timber and the lumber guys there, and you see beautiful homes in Buffalo. You go to like a regular house and there'll be a staircase of, oh my, look at the wood in that stair. Cause there's so much wood around, you know, it's just fascinating. Well, just to afford one of these back then, I went for $4,500. Yeah. That was a lot of money. A house was $1,200 just to give you some idea. And the average salary was only 600 for the year. So today this would have been about $154,000 car for the average man. You know, I have a, when my dad thought, when I was a kid, he'd buy an encyclopedia set. He got an encyclopedia set for $10 and it was, everything was old. I looked up automobiles and it said, play thing of the rich. The automobile, a play thing of the rich. And they show a guy a big cigar, you know, and that's what, that's what it was. The average man could ever afford an automobile. And even Thomas had financial problems. Cause I think this was such a publicity coup for that company. Oh my, they became world famous overnight. Still went out of business. What? Three or four years after that. This went bankrupt. This was like landing on the moon back then when they were at times square at the starting line, there's like 250,000 people watching them. And when they went around, they had pigeons, you know, giving updates and all that kind of stuff. And people in the town didn't actually give updates. You mean they had carrier pigeons? Yeah. But that was it. They carried carrier pigeons. That's what the New York Times reported. I remember that. Had all these, imagine you're a 40 year traveling with all these pigeons and you write a story and put on, just fly to the New York Times. Yeah. Hilarious. And a lot of times they didn't even make it past the hundred yards because they had some bad turnouts there. One was that front light over there. Yeah. Oh, is that right? Yeah. Took it out and they crossed Siberia, right? Yep. Siberia. They went all the way up. Originally the route was taken up to Alaska. They were so far ahead of all the other teams. They got all the way up there and they said, there's no way to do this unless we disassemble it. The drifts were 12 feet high. They came back down, got a boat all the way over to Japan. They went over to Siberia, but I mean, it's never been done before. Most of the world never saw a car until they saw the Thomas flyer. And how long did it take? 170 days, 170 days. But look at, I mean, they started in February 12th in New York, going up to Buffalo, you back East, you know how those storms are. Can you imagine going like that with the windshield and one of the cars dropped out right at the first leg. So they went across that. So how many miles was that? 36,000 miles? Something like that. About that. The 30s, just to get to that part in the middle of a blizzard. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, just fascinating. And what are some of the other cars that competed? Do you know any of those? Yeah. France had three teams all together and Italy had a team and Germany had a team. And at the end, there was only three teams that actually made it. The United States and Germany and Italy came in about 45 days later. And Teddy Roosevelt sat in this seat. Yeah. Yeah. After they got back from the race, they went to go visit him and he wanted to acknowledge him. And he actually sat in that seat right there. Oh, that's cool. There you go. Has the engine ever been restored or just cleaned up? Cleaned up? It was, there wasn't much left of the car when Bill Harrod got to it. Yeah. So he went through and actually George Schuster, who made it from the very beginning to the end, the only one, he was offered the car and he turned it down. Didn't think it was going to amount to anything, but I think he would take that back. And he was what? Was he a mechanic or a driver? I'm trying to remember. Yeah, he was a mechanic for Mr. Thomas and he actually was down in New York City. He got a telegraph and says, tomorrow, I need you to be in New York City. You're going to be a mechanic on this and you're going to be racing around the world. That's how much notice he had. I just liked the idea that Johnson, he got in there, you know, get in there and make that happen. As you can see, it's chain drive. Yeah. You fill this with oil and it just drips on the chain. This is for your acetylene lights or your carbide lights, I guess. Right. You fill it with water, you drop these carbon, it makes a gas, the gas goes up and then you light it with a match. And the only modifications they made on it was the fenders. They used to have planks that were all the way across because they had to make this going through snow. It's the only thing they could do. Oh, I see. So you got this wood here and then the fabric to keep it off. Okay. Plus, you had to carry all your tools and everything in this, right? Everything was here. They had about 20 gallons under the seat, 35 gallon behind the seat. And then I read things up to about 800 pounds. They were carrying all their supplies. I mean, there's no gas stations, there's no roads, there's no anything. So something broke down. They do a lot of walking. I guess you slept under the car? Under the car. They had tents. They said that at some point, like when they're in Siberia, they had like 77 days, literally 77 days. And they had like four or five days the whole time that they actually slept in a bed. But these guys were heroes. Even when they were in Siberia, you know, you forget about the weather and everything. They had bandits going after them because there was a word out that if they captured them, there'd be a good ransom. Oh, I see. So they're looking over the shoulder all the time too. And you had pneumatic tires. These are not solid rubber, right? Right. These are air tires. Yep. Four inch front, five in the back. You probably carried a half a dozen spare tires, correct? Always. Yep. And they're shipping ahead of time to places that seldom got there when they were supposed to. Four speed or three speed? Four speed. Oh, four speed transmission. Okay. And this was a stock car. Yeah. Okay. Came right off like about a week or so ahead of time before the race, they just rolled it off and that's what they had, except for the fenders. And this is, these are oilers, these little things that you fill up with oil. When the car's running, you see it drips to lubricate. Yeah. And they had a primer right there underneath it. Well, you know, I wore a watch that, this is a 1921 Vassar on Constantine driver's watch. And the idea is you wear it inside and with those big steering wheels and you're like this, you see, see the way it's offset. Yeah. So, oh, you always know what time it is. If you wear it normally, you go, why is it? Yeah. So when you weren't on the inside, so it makes it kind of cool. I thought it'd be fun to, to wear while driving this. Let's see what else we got. This is your fuel tank. Yep. The additional, that was the 35 gallon one that was put on after the fact. Okay. Modification. 35 gallon. Yeah. Plus you had to carry all the extra oil and everything. There was no oil to buy on the road. Nope. No, they would do their best to send telegraphs ahead of time where they thought they were going to be and say, if there's a broken part. But a lot of that things, a lot of the stories I heard where things broke down, he'd have to go like five or six miles walk to get more gas or get some horses to go find someone that would help him out. And what, what was the last, how many days later did the last guy come in? Did they know? Uh, the, well, actually the funny story is Germany got there a couple of days before, but they were penalized because they did a little shortcut. Oh, that's yeah. They put it on a train for about a thousand trains. They did that. And in addition to that, the Thomas fire group, they're the only ones that took the original route all the way up to Alaska. They were going to originally cross the Bering straight. Right. Thinking that the ocean was going to freeze and they found out that's not going to work. So they came back down. They were given an additional 15 days for that. And then Germany was penalized 15 days. So even though they got there ahead, they really came in behind. Yeah. So, and plus it must've tried to spike each other along the way. I imagine there was some, uh, I think I look at it as like the original, uh, shows on TV, you know, a lot of trauma shows. Yeah. One of those reality TV shows because they were, they were fighting, there was egos, there was people changing teams and getting on other people's teams. It was the bosses calling them up and let making them go home. There's a lot of drama. Yeah. I'll get the boss calling up. There are no phones. Pigeons. Pigeons. I mean, what are all these holes here for? Do we know? Yeah. Originally it's kind of like the wagon, you know, and they had the little tarp over it. They did that in the beginning. They thought with the canvas, it was going to help it out, but it didn't last. Some of them were there for structure to support the boards. I loved all the carvings because every time, like some of these are girlfriends and people all around the world carved their initials in when they made these stops, a lot of history. And that's how it was verified. When George Schuster came up, he wasn't sure if it was really hair. It wasn't sure if it was really his car. Right. I think when he went on that show, you were referencing, I think he said afterwards, that's not the right car. Cause he thought it wasn't right. Right. Right. And then he came back and he saw rewelded to the frame on the backside and you saw one of the initials and one of the writer's girlfriends and he verified this is the right one. So hair was happy. All right. Can we take a look at the Yeah, let's do it. Oh, here we go. This is a, how many cubic inch, five, what? 571. It was a monster. This is the exhaust size to get the exhaust valve. You want to do this and you lift that up. These are priming cups to start it. You put a little bit of gas in there. You turn that like gas to go down the cylinder. You close it again. You'd crank it. You'd fire it off. Two spark plugs, the cylinder, you have a battery coil and magneto. Yes. So you have two, two ignition systems. If one fails, these are all grease caps here. Yeah. Pretty neat. Look at this. And this is what you're a speedo drive. Uh, compression. Oh, compressor. Really? Yeah. Compressor release. Okay. Yeah. Compression. That's right. There's no electric starter. No, no. And this, this guy literally way ahead of his time. Imagine hand cranking this in Siberia. No. Yeah. Just in your garage trying to get started with 50 white oil. Oh my God. And there was no antifreeze. What did they run out? No water. And then they had to drain it every single night. Every single night. I mean, we get mad if our air condition is not working. Imagine every single night draining this in a blizzard. Again, the first part of it was snow drifts up in Alaska. They were 12 feet high going on every night and just filling it up and draining it again. But there must have been a confidence level because no matter what era you're in, you're getting the best of that era. Like when I was a kid, I remember seeing the little space capsule that, uh, uh, the first astronaut, what's his name? John Glenn. No, not John Glenn. The first one, Alan Shepard. Yeah. It was like, like two garbage cans, you know? And he said, well, that's pretty good. Yeah. I mean, that's the best we can do. You look at it now, you go, oh my God, I wouldn't get in that thing. But this, this is like a rocket ship. You're going to look how fast it is. You know, pretty amazing. Yeah. It was something that most of the world never saw before. And it was amazing to them. That's why they were so excited when they came through, people were having parties for them and, but they couldn't even stop. They get up every morning at eight o'clock, went to about five o'clock in the afternoon and worked on it till midnight fixing things. And they only made about 157 miles in a great day on average. Wow. Some days it would go like, uh, 20 hours and go four miles. Right. Get stuck in the box. Just unbelievable. No brakes in the front, obviously just rear brakes on it. Right. Probably a transmission brake of some sort. And he had a lubricator on both sides. And this is what oil? This is oil. Yeah. They could prime it up here. Right. Oil. It's not connected right now. One of the highlights, one of the stories I, I love to hear is that after going around the whole world, 170 days, they get to Paris to the gates and they have a broken light because one of those pigeons went into it and rushes somewhere. So it wasn't functioning. Policeman from Paris wasn't good sport. He wasn't happy. He wouldn't let them go. He's actually going to arrest them because the law back then is that you had to have two working lights, right? Right. So he wouldn't let him go. A person thought it was frustrating. He got his bicycle with the light on it. They put it up on top of the car, strapped it on the whole bicycle. Then they had, then they got to cross the finishing line after 170 days with a bicycle because the policeman said, you know, it's against the law without having to. That's funny. So he probably was about 80 years old or 90 years old in the fifties when that happened. He must still have relatives that around. Have any of the relatives ever come by? Yeah. Jeff mall. He's been a great supporter of the national automobile museum. He comes around and he'll do a reenactment of his great grandfather. He's got a huge, he knows everything about it. Very, very proud. And at the time you're just a mechanic looking for a job. All right. Drive around the world. You can work here the rest of your life. Yes. What a wonderful deal that is. Yeah. I think they threw in a thousand dollars, but the story was never got it. Yeah. But I don't think he ever got it. I don't think imagine a rich guy screwing a poor guy out of the money. I can't believe that. Well, just, just can we, can we fire it up? Yeah, let's, let's get it going for a spin. All right. What do we need to do here? Torquey motor 60 horsepower. Yeah. I think 70, just to pass the test. They say I have to go 50 miles an hour, but I guarantee you we can get up to 70. Oh yeah. They went about 150 miles. The best thing I ever did was 450 miles in one day. Yeah. Yeah. That was the best. But besides that, some days they could have gone only eight miles in a whole day. I can see driving in Siberia. It's a beautiful day. I just feel like we're going over the mountains. We've got a couple of bandits on our tail, trying to take us out. But it still feels incredibly powerful. It does. It's smooth. These old T heads have lots of torque. I mean, I don't want to be 70 horsepower, but you can pull a truck with this thing. And literally it pulled, it actually pulled out a lot of the competitors. Like Germany broke down the box. In the beginning they had a deal. They said that we'll take Tourances in first place. Right, right. Then it got down to the real time and they said, no, no, none of that stuff. It got pretty cutthroat to the point where if they heard one going out, no matter how many hours of sleep, one hour or two hours of sleep, they all got up and raced again. A couple of wrong turns really sent the Americans back a little bit. But they're the only ones that made the original route. They're the only ones that went up to Alaska. The only ones that did all 23,000 miles. It's incredibly high gear because I'm in second gear. This would be fourth gear in any other car in the period. Yeah, it would. I mean, look at how much power you got. Yeah. But when you're going up these mountains, you know, they had very little time to be going flat. Everything else was, you're going up mountains around corners. They literally had to pick up the car, turn high. People were stopping at 200 miles, carrying 35. We passed the French. The Germans are right next to us and we're just going right by them. George Huston said what's not good, not reliable. Yeah. So after that it went all downhill. He spent $100,000 just to run the race, just to support this, which back then was a million bucks. So that was part of it, just a million bucks to invest in the race. And who spent the millions? Thomas company? Yeah, Thomas. Thomas is $100,000, but back then it was a million dollars worth. Easy. More than a million. Yeah. This is a model 35 model. After that one, another one wasn't as reliable. So that long career that you had, you know, for life, we talked about job for life. Folks, if you want to see this vehicle in person at any time in Reno, come to the National Automobile Museum. It's right downtown. It's not like if you're near any of the casinos or restaurants, it's right there on the main drag. And it's really worth seeing. I think it's worth a trip to Reno. But I mean, this really is a piece of living history. The actual car that won the race and the actual condition it was in, same colors. Who knows? Some of this dirt might even be real for all I know. But thank you so much for being the custodian. It's a wonderful vehicle. Thanks for having us. Oh, really appreciate it. That's great. That's great. We've been talking about this for a while. I know. I mean, this is like being in the Mayflower of one of Christopher Columbus's ships, you know? Yeah. I mean, it's pretty amazing. And we have 240 other automobiles up there that are pretty cool. But this one right now, this is the best. Yeah. The most history. Well, it does have the most history. And for a while, it was the most famous car in the world, which is pretty amazing. Yeah. And no one's duplicated this race yet. Yeah. No one's duplicated it. Let's do it. We should do it. Let's do it now. Yeah. Jay Leno, Garage Six on the world. There you go.