Jay Leno on 4/27/08. Credit: PRPhotos
Jay Leno has an extensive car collection. Aside from his TV gig as host of the Tonight Show, it’s what he’s best known for these days, even having an internet segment through NBC called Jay’s Garage. Not only does he have a lot of them, he has a rare and valuable collection. But now, one of the rarest and most valuable will land him in court.

The family of Macy’s heir John Straus is suing the “Tonight Show” host and the owners of an East Side garage who allegedly duped the octogenarian out of his beloved – and one-of-a-kind – 1931 Duesenberg Model J.

The car’s estimated value is $1.2 million, but Leno bought it from the garage after a “sham” auction for a mere $180,000, Straus’ family charges in a Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit.

“The whole thing was a sham,” said one of the Straus family’s lawyers, Nathan Goldberg.

Reps for Leno and the garage didn’t immediately return calls for comment.

The suit says Straus had rebuffed car-collecting comic Leno’s offers to buy the car for years, but it ended it up in Leno’s lap after the garage pulled some funny business in 2005.

[From NY Post]

The family is claiming that John Straus was in his 80’s and owed a parking fee to the garage, which they notified him was past due and the car would be auctioned if he didn’t pay. They alledge that Straus sent them a check for $22,000, but the check was returned and he was told that he owed $36,000 and gave him another account number. The different account number was for the space occupied by two other cars Straus had with another garage owned by the same people and therefore defaulted on payment for the Deusenberg. The garage then sold both the lesser cars to themselves and the $1.2 million car to Leno for $180,000.

Straus died in May of this year and his daughters discovered the problem then. The Straus’s are descendants of Isadore and Ida Straus, co-founders of Macys. The family says the cars are family heirlooms and want them back.

While Leno is named in the suit, they don’t believe he was in collusion with the garage owners, but that he should have known something wasn’t right.

The suit falls short of accusing Leno of conspiring with the garage, but the lawyers said the comedian and his lawyers should have known something was funny after seeing the car’s auction price.

“Leno was far less concerned with the bona fides of the underlying purported auction and sale, then with achieving his long awaited purchase of this one of a kind Model J,” the suit says.

Leno has reportedly admitted going to great lengths to get the car. In a 2007 book, he said he made up a story about the car to keep other collectors away.

Goldberg said in addition to using trickery to auction off the cars, the garage – which collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees from Straus over the decades – didn’t follow the legal steps it was supposed to in carrying out.

Had the cars been auctioned off legally, he said, the garage could have kept up to the amount of money Straus owed, and anything over the amount would then have to go to Straus.

If this is all as cut and dried as it sounds, Jay should spend some quality time with the Duesenberg now, because it doesn’t look like he’s going to polishing her for much longer.

Here is a 1931 Duesenberg Model J, courtesy of Automotive Forums. It is not the specific car owned by Jay Leno.