Corvette Quarterly’s 1999 Jay Leno Corvette Interview

by Scott · Published May 4, 2022 · Updated February 24, 2026

Jay Leno Finally Gets A Corvette!

Dateline: 5.4.22 (Corvette Quarterly interview below) – Jay Leno is arguably more popular today within the car community than he ever. Jay hosted The Tonight Show for nineteen years. Jay appears to be having more fun doing his Jay Leno’s Garage programs. You can tell he’s very comfortable in his garage. Not that The Tonight Show was a drag, but you can clearly see that cars, motorcycles, and machines are his first passion.

“Jay Leno’s Garage” started in August 2014 as a “special” on CNBC and soon became a prime-time series on CNBC the following year. The series ran on TV for six seasons. Many of us have been experiencing Jay Leno’s Garage on YouTube.com, which launched ten years ago in 2012. As of today (5.4.22), the channel has 3.33 million subscribers! Typically, the channel adds a new video once a week.

Car guys are always talking about Jay Leno

The local Corvette club I belong to is Highlands County Corvettes, here in Highlands County, Florida. Our club leader, John Meyerhoff resides in Lake Placid, Florida, which is about 15 miles south of Sebring International Raceway. The club is very active with Corvette Car Shows on the 4^th Saturday of every month, from October through to the end of May. We have Destination Events, a Christmas Party, and we get together every week on Fridays at Oscar’s Family Restaurant in Sebring for breakfast. It is a very social group of guys and gals.

At nearly every breakfast and Corvette show, I hear someone mention Jay Leno. He’s everywhere, he’s everywhere! And the comments are consistently positive. Jay is held in very high regard.

As a writer and illustrator for various Corvette and other car magazines, I have a fairly large collection of reference books and magazines. I was recently looking through my collection of Corvette News / Corvette Quarterly and came across something I wanted to share. In the Winter 1999 issue of Corvette Quarterly, the cover story is “The Consummate Collector – The C5 Finds a spot in Jay Leno’s Garage”.

Jay’s “win-win” deal to get a new 1999 Corvette

In 1999, Jay drove the pace car at the Indy 500, and in exchange for cash, Jay asked for product and was given a Navy Blue 1999 Corvette Coupe with chrome 5-spoke wheels. For the Jay Leno faithful know, Jay has lots of superb, high-end exotic sports cars, so I was pleasantly surprised when I watched the 23-minute 1999 Corvette video on his YouTube Channel, that Jay really liked the C5 Corvette! Of course, why wouldn’t he?

The Corvette Quarterly interview with Jay Leno, written by John L. Stein, with photographs by EJ Camp, is a fun read. You can read the scans of the interview below. Enjoy! – Scott

Jay Leno’s book, “Leading With My Chin,” is Jay’s story in his own words and is a laugh-out-loud read. “Behind the Curtin” is Jay’s Tonight Show Producer, Dave Berg’s, behind-the-scenes experience of what it was like as the producer of a TV talk show. If you think it must have been a dream job, think again. Jay was a dream boss; it was the stars that were challenging! Both books are available on Amazon.com