Late night talk show legend and car guy extraordinaire Jay Leno paid a visit to the Tonight Show — the program that he hosted for the better part of 22 years — last night to chat about a number of topics, including a recent extracurricular tumble he took in one of the most iconic drag cars in history.
Leno, in his post-Tonight Show life, has been following his automotive passions by starring in a reality television program titled Jay Leno’s Garage on CNBC, in which he takes viewers on rides in and reviews some of the most elaborate, valuable, and powerful restored vintage and modern muscle and sports cars. In the second season of the show, which premiered on Wednesday evening, Leno hooks up with drag racing exhibition icon Bob Riggle to take a ride in his famous Hurst Hemi Under Glass 1969 Barracuda, one of the machines that Riggle and Wild Bill Shrewsberry toured the nation with for decades, dating back to the mid-1960s.
With Leno strapped in and the cameras rolling, Riggle pointed the Hemi Under Glass skyward in the Irwindale Speedway’s infield and after dropping the nose, got on the binders too hard to slow the car before running up the banking, in turn rolling the highly-valuable machine over onto its roof. Previews for the new season of Jay Leno’s Garage have provided snippets of the incident, but Jay’s appearance on the Tonight Show marked the first time that it’s been shown in its entirety.
Leno, of course, was fine, as was Riggle, but like so many others out there, it pains us to see that original Hemi Under Glass with such considerable damage. According to some unconfirmed information on the web, Riggle has already purchased another ’69 body and is or will be repairing the car back to new.