Jay Leno’s upcoming visit to the Woodward Dream Cruise has been three years in the making.

Well, really, it has been 61 years in the making.

Leno, an avid car collector and returning attendee of the Dream Cruise, will be coming to metro Detroit to see the thousands of cool cars lining Woodward, but he will also be here to pick up — and tell some stories about — his 1963 Chrysler Turbine Car, an experimental coupe built by Chrysler. The car is powered by a turbine engine and coated in a glowing orange coat of paint over its swoopy, sleek body. There were 55 of them made, and Chrysler rolled them out as a sort of publicity stunt.

Eventually, Chrysler decided it didn’t want to take the car to market and rolled them back, destroying most of them. Only nine of them still survive. Six of them are in museums. Chrysler owns two. The other belongs to Jay Leno.

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According to Leno’s friend, Steve Lehto, the cars ran on any liquid that burned: “You can drive these things on kerosene, diesel, palm heating oil, Chanel No. 5, vodka, tequila.”

Lehto, an attorney with a law office in Southfield and also a successful car-law-related YouTube channel with over 500,000 subscribers, has written a whole book about the Turbine Car, featuring a forward from Leno himself. The two have been friends for years, but it began with Leno poking fun at him on his late-night show, “The Tonight Show,” for a different book he had written, called “Death’s Door,” which had been advertised as a good Christmas present. Leno joked that the title was too morose for a Christmas gift, and moved on.

Lehto found it funny, and sent a copy of “Death’s Door” to Leno, along with a manuscript for his book about the Turbine Car, knowing he was a car enthusiast, on a whim. Leno called him, interested in the manuscript, and they sparked a friendship over a fascination with the experimental vehicle.

Eventually, Leno convinced Chrysler to sell him one of the nine remaining Turbine Cars.

Lehto and Leno kept in touch over the years, with Lehto even flying to California to take the car for a spin, but contact was sporadic and intermittent, Lehto said.

That is, until Leno called three years ago with a problem: The engine in his Turbine Car had completely failed. Kaput.

“He said he had tried everybody he could think of to fix the car,” Lehto said. Not even Leno’s own team of automotive experts could fix it. Leno wanted to know if Lehto knew anyone who might be able to make it run again.

“There’s only one thing I can think of that we haven’t talked about yet,” Lehto remembers saying. “The guy who is like the godfather of (the Turbine Car) was named Sam Williams.”

Williams, a celebrated engineer known for his work on turbine engines, left Chrysler in the ’60s. He opened his own business, Williams International, in Walled Lake soon after, bringing a number of the original Turbine Car engineers with him. Nowadays, Williams International specializes in jet engines on military contracts, and they are certainly not in the business of repairing antique cars.

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But Lehto said whatever brainpower went into building the Turbine Car in the 1960s went to Williams International, and if anyone could help Leno, it was them, he said.

Leno asked him whether he knew anyone who worked there.

“Yeah, my brother works there,” Lehto remembers saying.

After a little hemming and hawing, Lehto said, Williams International agreed to take Leno’s car and fix it as long as it didn’t disrupt their normal workflow.

For three years, Lehto’s brother and other engineers at Williams International worked to put the car back together after Leno had it shipped to them in crates. They 3D-printed parts in steel. They remade parts that haven’t been manufactured in decades. They rallied together long-retired engineers from the ’60s who worked on the initial Turbine Cars.

And three years later, as the product of hours of late-night and weekend maintenance, Leno’s Turbine Car started running and driving last week, Lehto said. On Saturday, he’s coming to pick it up.

Lehto said it’s the nature of the car community to come together for a project like this.

“Everybody was helping on this,” he said. “It’s true of a lot of car communities where people who rally around a particular car are happy to share their knowledge, share their expertise and even happy to share their parts.”

You might think car collectors get greedy, Lehto said, but the saga to rebuild Leno’s ride has been an exercise in sharing.

“If you’ve got one of these cars, you would think you’d hang on to your parts, like ‘Don’t touch my stuff I might need it!’ ” Lehto said. “But no, they’re happy to help because they want to see another car stay on the road.”

News reporter Liam Rappleye can be reached at LRappleye@freepress.com

By ED WHITE, Associated Press

DETROIT (AP) — A Detroit judge who ordered a teenager into jail clothes and handcuffs on a field trip to his courtroom will be off the bench while undergoing “necessary training,” the court’s chief judge said Thursday.

Meanwhile, the girl’s mother said Judge Kenneth King was a “big bully.”

“My daughter is hurt. She is feeling scared,” Latoreya Till told the Detroit Free Press.

She identified her daughter as Eva Goodman. The 15-year-old fell asleep in King’s court Tuesday while on a visit organized by a Detroit nonprofit.

King didn’t like it. But he said it was her attitude that led to the jail clothes, handcuffs and stern words.

“I wanted this to look and feel very real to her, even though there’s probably no real chance of me putting her in jail,” he explained to WXYZ-TV.

King has been temporarily removed from his criminal case docket and will undergo “necessary training to address the underlying issues that contributed to this incident,” said William McConico, the chief judge at 36th District Court.

The court “remains deeply committed to providing access to justice in an environment free from intimidation or disrespect. The actions of Judge King on August 13th do not reflect this commitment,” McConico said.

He said the State Court Administrative Office approved the step. King will continue to be paid. Details about the training, and how long it would last, were not disclosed.

King, who has been a judge since 2006, didn’t immediately return a phone message seeking comment. At the close of his Thursday hearings, accessible on YouTube, he made a heart shape with his hands. The judge’s work includes determining whether there’s enough evidence to send felony cases to trial at Wayne County Circuit Court.

Till said her daughter was sleepy during the Tuesday court visit because the family doesn’t have a permanent residence.

“And so, that particular night, we got in kind of late,” she told the Free Press, referring to Monday night. “And usually, when she goes to work, she’s up and planting trees or being active.”

The teen was seeing King’s court as part of a visit organized by The Greening of Detroit, an environmental group.

“Although the judge was trying to teach a lesson of respect, his methods were unacceptable,” said Marissa Ebersole Wood, the group’s chairperson. “The group of students should have been simply asked to leave the courtroom if he thought they were disrespectful.”

The teen girl was sleepy because she had no permanent spot to stay. But the Detroit judge who caught her nodding off in his courtroom wanted to send a message.

Days after having the teen don jail garb and handcuffs while threatening jail time, 36th District Court Judge Kenneth King is receiving death threats and was temporarily removed from his docket. The girl is traumatized and afraid. Her family hired a lawyer.

It’s a situation antithetical to “the people’s court” atmosphere that one of Detroit’s busiest courts aims to provide, acknowledged Chief Judge William McConico. He also announced King’s temporary removal from the docket and required training.

“We sincerely hope that this incident does not undermine our longstanding relationships with local schools. Our thoughts and actions are now with the student and her family, and we are committed to taking these corrective measures to demonstrate that this incident is an isolated occurrence,” McConico said in a statement Thursday afternoon.

“We are dedicated to ensuring that our court continues to uphold the highest standards of fairness and respect.”

‘My daughter is hurt’

Eva Goodman, 15, works with The Greening of Detroit, a nonprofit that aims to improve the “green infrastructure” of the city. On Tuesday, Goodman and peers with the project attended King’s courtroom to both watch proceedings and learn from the judge.

While speaking to the teens, King noticed Goodman sleeping. Video of King’s courtroom showed he yelled at her to wake up, but minutes later saw her sleeping again. At that point he ordered her taken into custody.

Latoreya Till said her daughter acknowledged sleeping, but did not understand the gravity of the situation. She has never been in a courtroom before, and never been in trouble before, Till explained.

After court staff led Goodman out of the room, Till said they told her daughter to undress and put on a green jail jumpsuit. Till said her daughter refused to take off certain clothing items, but was given the opportunity to change in an empty room. While there was no staff present in the room observing the minor changing, Till said her daughter believes there was a security camera.

After she changed, Goodman was handcuffed. Video shows she remained out of King’s courtroom for roughly two hours before he brought her back. At that point, he held a hearing, asking a defense lawyer to help her before berating her for sleeping and threatening her with jail time.

Ultimately, King allowed Goodman to leave, but not before asking her peers for a show of hands to decide whether she needed to spend time in jail.

“My daughter is hurt. She is feeling scared. She didn’t want to go to work. She feels like as if her peers went against her. She was real nervous and intimidated,” Till told the Free Press in a phone interview.

“We have to bounce around currently because we don’t have a permanent address. And so, that particular night, we got in kind of late. And usually, when she goes to work, she’s up and planting trees or being active.”

King told the Free Press on Wednesday he thought he acted appropriately.

“I wasn’t trying to punish the young lady. What I was trying to do was, I was trying to serve as a deterrence,” King said in a phone interview Wednesday afternoon.

“I wanted to instill in this kid that this is not a joke, this is a very serious situation.”

But Till said her daughter did not need the lesson: she’s a kind, smart, funny, athletic teen.

“(King) basically was being a big bully to a child that was sleeping and unaware of the etiquette of a courtroom, because she’s never been there, she’s never been in trouble,” Till said. “She’s not a problem child.”

‘You guys are making me tear up’

King did not return a phone message seeking additional comment on Thursday.

Before being removed from his docket, King conducted court as usual on Thursday, according to YouTube footage of his courtroom. Throughout the morning, viewers commented with messages of support for King.

About 27 minutes into the footage, in between hearings, King appears to review the YouTube comments. Then someone posting under the name “CTRM 234 36^th District Court” typed in the chat “receiving death threats.”

King typically presides over courtroom 234.

At the end of his morning docket, he turned to the camera and gave the “heart hands” symbol.

“That concludes the docket for today, folks. Hope to see you tomorrow, same bat station, same bat time,” he said, making a reference to the classic Batman television show.

Later, he appears to type several more times in the chat.

“You guys are making me tear up,” he writes, wiping his eyes, as commenters wish him well.  

His final post indicated he’s not allowed to comment on his situation.

It’s unclear how long he will be removed from the docket.

Reach Dave Boucher at dboucher@freepress.com and on X, previously called Twitter, @Dave_Boucher1.