Two Baja Bugs, one family: Rod Emory rebuilds his father's first
Uncle Don, now 80, painted the tribute car the same chrome yellow he used on the original in 1967.
Jay Leno's GarageStory of Why this story? The channel's weekly summary: what went up this week, what is drawing views now, and where the channel stands among similar channels.
The First Baja Bug Was Totaled. Rod Emory Recreated It for His Dad | Jay Leno's Garage
No ordinary daily pace is on hand to set against this week, so the cars will have to tell it. And they do, because both new episodes ended up circling the same scruffy little off-roader.
The newer one is the heart of it. Around 1966, Gary Emory traded a motorcycle for a wrecked '57 oval-window Beetle and turned it into what the episode calls the very first Baja Bug, finished in 1967 with his brother Don on paint. That car was later totaled. After Gary died in August 2025, his son Rod Emory and the family built a tribute, and Don, now 80, painted it the same chrome yellow. Rod walks Jay through how the name came about and how Drino Miller turned the idea into the first kit. The tribute also takes the changes Gary said he would make if he did it again: independent rear suspension and a roughly 190-horsepower Type 4 engine borrowed from one of Rod's Outlaws. Rod is the man behind those Emory Outlaw Porsche 356s, so the swap is a family habit. It passed 190,000 views in three days.
The Baja Bug had already turned up a few days earlier, in Donald Osborne's Assess and Caress. A 1974 Baja sat beside a 1938 American Bantam Roadster and the 1958 Saab 93B Jay has owned for almost 40 years, and the two hosts, the description admits, did not agree on the ranking.
Above both sits something with wings: a month-old flight in the Cirrus Vision Jet, past 2.7 million views and still busy. Among the car channels nearest in size, Forrest's Auto Reviews, DailyDrivenExotics and Mighty Car Mods are having the lively stretch, while Jay's channel sits just short of four million subscribers.
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- September 28, 2026
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Leno took over The Tonight Show from Johnny Carson in 1992 and hosted it until 2014, apart from a short break in 2009–2010.
