The New Cruiser!
Jay Leno

From The London Times
There are 400 police chases every year in Los Angeles, and here everything stops during a police pursuit. People will watch one for three, four hours on the TV. It’s basically the same chase every day and they all end the same way: the person runs out of gas, they run out, fall on the ground and the cops come and handcuff them. It’s never that exciting but for some reason people think it is. OJ Simpson was the first to make them popular and now it’s become a local phenomenon. The greatest was the guy who stole the tank in San Diego, crushing road signs and vehicles before being stopped. I guess it makes the whole job of being a traffic cop look exciting.
Historically, there’s been quite a difference in police cars, at least here in the States. You always had a couple of types: the slowest was almost certainly the three-wheeled Harley-Davidson Servi-Car. It was technically a motorbike but they called it a car. They used those in the Fifties and early Sixties, mostly for ticket writing and downtown duties like that. They were powered by a flathead V-twin. You didn’t have too much trouble outrunning them!
Then police forces would have one or two high performance cars, like the chief’s car. A lot of them were six-cylinder Fords or the small V8 Fords with a stick shift, no radio, no air-con, no nothing. The most feared police cars, at least when I was a kid, were the ones the “Staties” had. By Staties I mean the Massachusetts state troopers.
They usually ran big Dodges, like the Polara. It had the big 440 (cubic-inch) motor in it and it ran 145mph. In the Sixties and early Seventies it was the fastest police car. Actually, the fastest of almost any American car, with the exception perhaps of the 427 Corvette.
In those days the cops had a two-way radio, a shotgun and sidearm. There would be some flares in the trunk, but that was it. It’s not like today where they carry so much equipment, which makes the cars much more cumbersome. And these Polaras were big, fast cars and pretty hairy to drive. The early ones were mostly drum brakes all the way around. Not much stopping power, then. The rule of thumb was, when the cop got out of the car to come after you, since they had no air-conditioning, if he was all sweaty and you could see the stain on his shirt, you were getting a ticket. Because he’d just worked way too hard to catch you.
When we were kids, if you were stopped by a cop in an air-conditioned car, he would usually just say: “Slow down, take it easy, son.” But when they had to work, forget it. Remember, a lot of these cars had no power steering, no power brakes. It really was, and I know this sounds terribly sexist today, just a man’s car. They really were he-man cars. It took a lot of heft and weight to fling them around. They had the big push bar on the front and they were black and white; they looked pretty macho.
There was a TV show here in America called Highway Patrol, which starred Broderick Crawford. The show always started with this very dramatic music and a voiceover saying: “When the laws of any state are broken, a group of trained men go into action. Sometimes they’re called the militia. Sometimes they’re called the state police. We call them the highway patrol!” And then more dramatic music.
Then the horns would blow and big, fat Crawford would pull up in a 55 Buick and he would slide it in the dirt. And even though it was on dirt you’d hear “screeee”, as the tyres screeched. And he would always pick up the two-way radio and bark something like: “We’ll have this town locked up so tight, a kiddie car couldn’t get through it!”
And of course the criminals are always named Legs Somebody or Mugsy. It was a half-hour cop show that always involved a chase. And if you watch some of the early episodes you get to see a young Clint Eastwood playing a punk trying to outrun Crawford and the highway patrol, which of course nobody could do.
In those days the cop actually had to clock you and had something called a telltale speedometer to give him the evidence necessary to pull you over. I’ve got a 1931 Henderson four-cylinder motorcycle that was a police pursuit bike. What happened was the officer would set the speedometer to zero and when he chased you there were two needles, a red needle and a white needle. They would sweep concurrently, equally. The red needle would stay at the highest speed needed to catch you. So consequently, if you were going 80, the officer would pull you over and you would deny you were going 80. Then he would take you over to his bike and show you the red needle on 80, and that would be his proof.
Most cops, then and now, are pretty good. If you’re not drunk and you’re not belligerent, they’ll cut you a deal. Maybe they’ll knock off a few miles per hour or send you to traffic school or something.
I’ve never had a cop car, so having Dodge’s new Charger police car for a few days has been a hoot. It’s quite fun driving this around because it’s fun to watch other people. On the freeway, if you’re going 70, suddenly everyone around you is doing 65, even though it says Dodge City Police on the side and has a big sign saying “Out of service”. Nobody actually reads the badge on the car. Then they spot me in it and they wave, or give me the finger.
It drives really nicely. It’s tight and feels stable. In the early days, police cars would just have a heavy-duty package. Basically, the same car with heavier springs, stiffer shocks and better brakes.
In the late Sixties, early Seventies, a police cruiser and their civilian equivalent might have got a motor that would have an exemption sticker on it which meant it wasn’t subject to smog restrictions because it had a bigger cam or something like that. So you got an unstrangled version of the ordinary motor.
When my dad bought his Ford Galaxie, unbeknown to him I ordered the police pursuit package with the bigger motor, bigger radiator and no mufflers. When my dad went to pick up the car he started it and it went: “Urrnnghaaa! Urrnghaaa!” And my dad goes: “There’s no muffler! There’s no goddamn muffler on this car!” And they say: “But Mr Leno, you ordered the ‘delete muffler’ pack on your order.” And he says: “Why would I not want my muffler?”
“But Mr Leno, here’s your order. Muffler delete.” My father was so furious.
When we were kids and you bought junk cars out of the junkyard you always tried to buy ex-police because you knew you were getting a big motor. It might be worn out but you could fix that. When we were kids, for $500 you could get a car with a black body and white doors and no numbers or markings on it that would be only two years old with 280,000 miles on it. But they were fun. Just drive them around all day until you blew them up.
The new Charger isn’t as big as the old police cars. They were enormous and were based on the big Chrysler chassis that was in the Chrysler 300 and the New Yorker and all those. In fact I have just taken it to Burbank police station for the officers to check it over and the one comment most of the police had was that it was small. It looks small to them because if you’re carrying a couple of felons and a trunkful of gear you need something that’s a pretty good size. They liked the cupholders and places to stash doughnuts, though.
This one is a pretty good choice for a police car. The Ford Crown Victoria is an old platform and has been around for a long time. By comparison with the current Crown Vic, the Charger is compact, but that’s cars in general. It’s not small. The space inside is better used than a car 20 years old. Other ways have been used to make it more efficient. In the past, cars had the big, high lights up in the roof, which cut about 10-15mph off the thing. Now you have those low bars, which are pretty aerodynamic.
The Charger has got four-wheel disc brakes and handles and stops probably better that any police car in history. It’s just more of a balanced package. In the old days they would increase power to the engine by 75-100% and everything else, including brakes, would be increased by 10-15%.
European cars are not used in the States for police cruisers. But as far as European cars go, any of the big Mercs or Audis would be good. But you don’t really need four-wheel drive in California.
The handling of the Charger seemed pretty good. For a big American sedan it handled well. I think the Charger benefited from the union between Daimler and Chrysler. Obviously they picked up a few suspension tricks from Mercedes. It feels solid and the brakes seem impeccable. The acceleration seemed quite good too. I think it would be a great high-speed pursuit car. It was tempting to flick on the lights and siren.
Even without the light and “whoop whoop” on, it had the desired effect. After a while I sort of forgot I was driving something that looked like a police car. There was one guy across the street that looked sort of like a criminal and he didn’t actually look at the car. He didn’t make eye contact, which I thought was weird. I guess he thought it was a police car and I was a real cop.
You know, this could get addictive.
Vital statistics
Model Dodge Charger Police Package
Engine 5654cc, eight cylinders
Power 340bhp @ 5000rpm
Torque 390 lb ft @ 4000rpm
Transmission Five-speed automatic
CO2 n/a 0-60mph: 6sec 148mph
Acceleration
Top speed Price $26,930 (£13,423)

Merv Griffen Is Dead at 82
Nicole Bengiveno / New York Times
The cause was prostate cancer, the statement said, according to the A.P. Mr. Griffin had traded in singing for acting in movies, served as game-show host and filled in for Jack Paar on late-night television when, in 1962, NBC gave him his own show, “The Merv Griffin Show.” It started the same day that Johnny Carson began hosting “The Tonight Show,” and although Mr. Griffin’s reviews were initially better, he quickly faded. The show was canceled in less than a year.
But Mr. Griffin had secured an agreement with NBC to allow him to set up a production company. Never one to wallow in setbacks, Mr. Griffin turned to a game-show idea where the contestants would be given answers and would have to come up with the question, losing money — an anomaly at the time — if they were wrong. “Jeopardy” ran for 11 years, then was revived nearly a decade later.
After “Jeopardy,” Mr. Griffin came up with “Wheel of Fortune,” which has run continuously since 1975, making it the longest-running game show on syndicated television. Most recently, Mr. Griffin has been active in the development of “Crosswords,” a new game show based on his passion for crossword puzzles that is scheduled to premiere on Sept. 10.
Mr. Griffin still was not finished with talk shows, however. In 1965, two years after being cancelled, “The Merv Griffin Show” was revived as a syndicated program sold directly to local stations.
The program was a free-wheeling amalgam of interviews with celebrities who, their lips loosened by backstage cocktails, let down their guard at Mr. Griffin’s deceptively probing questions, and installments focused on sexual and criminal themes that anticipated all manner of talk shows that followed, from Oprah Winfrey to Jerry Springer. The show survived, in various formats, until 1986, when he sold Merv Griffin Enterprises to Coca-Cola for $250 million.
By that time, Mr. Griffin was already an astute investor, having started buying radio stations and other media outlets more than 20 years earlier. Among them was Teleview Racing Patrol, which he built into the leading source of closed-circuit broadcasts of horse racing to off-track betting and inter-track wagering sites in the country.
Mr. Griffin later expanded into hotels and casinos, jousting with Donald Trump and taking over Mr. Trump’s Resorts International property in Atlantic City and the Trump casino on Paradise Island in the Bahamas. But the deal came with a heavy debt burden that ultimately swallowed much of his investment, and the company was forced into bankruptcy in 1989.
When it emerged, Mr. Griffin began a program of upgrading the properties while also staging public tryouts for game-show contestants in the hotels, which also attracted customers for the casinos. In 1993, he sold much of his casino interests to Sun International.
Mr. Griffin similarly bought and refurbished the Beverly Hilton hotel in Beverly Hills, turning it into a preferred spot for Hollywood awards shows and opening a nightclub, The Coconut Club, modeled after the famed Coconut Grove, where Griffin sang early in his career. He sold the hotel in 2003.
From all those ventures, Mr. Griffin emerged a billionaire, though he maintained that he really didn’t know how much he was worth because if he did, it “would keep me from sleeping at night.”
With his easy smile and low-keyed manner, he seemed always the eternally jovial Irishman; few of those around him, much less his fans, thought of him as the entrepreneur he was. “I was buying things and nobody knew,” he said. “I never told anybody, because I noticed that when you walk down the street and everybody knows you’re rich, they don’t talk to you.”
Mr. Griffin’s life, it seemed, was dedicated to finding things to do that were exciting, using his penchant for entertainment to overcome a pudgy physique that drew taunts in childhood and resulted in large weight swings later in life. Growing up in San Mateo, Calif., a suburb of San Francisco, he organized weekly shows on his back porch, “recruiting kids as either stagehands, actors, or audience — sometimes all three.”
“I was the producer, always the producer,” he said.
Mr. Griffin was born on July 6, 1925, the son of Mervyn Edward Griffin Sr., a successful stockbroker, and the former Rita Robinson. Buddy Griffin, as he was called, showed little interest in sports as a child and instead gravitated to the piano, on which an aunt gave him lessons.
He was interested at first in classical music but concluded that popular music would be more rewarding: playing it enabled him to earn money at weddings, funerals and parties. As a teen-ager, he added singing to his piano playing and kept his hand in the classics by playing organ at his church.
After high school, he attended San Mateo Junior College and then the University of San Francisco but dropped out without getting a degree.
Though he never stopped wanting to be an entertainer, his father talked him into becoming a bank teller. The first day on the job, he learned that the teller working next to him had been there for almost three decades and was still paid a pittance. To his father’s dismay, Mr. Griffin quit immediately. From there, it was nearly all show business.
Years later, show business returned the favor. In 2005, he received a lifetime achievement award at the Daytime Emmys and a similar award from the Museum of Radio and Television. “There really has been no one who has managed to have his type of success in front of and behind the camera,” Stuart N. Brotman, president of the museum, said at the time. “He is a one-man conglomerate, and I can’t think of anyone else who has had that reach.”
Mr. Griffin and his wife, the former Julann Wright, were divorced in 1976. They had a son, Anthony, who survives him. Over the years, he squired many Hollywood actresses, including Eva Gabor, and he was close friends with Nancy Reagan, introducing her to Joan Quigley, the San Francisco astrologer.
But he was also dogged by sex scandals and insinuations that he was gay. In 1991, he was sued by Denny Terrio, the host of “Dance Fever,” another show Mr. Griffin created, for sexual harassment. The same year, Brent Plott, a longtime employee who worked as a bodyguard, horse trainer and driver, filed a $200 million palimony lawsuit. Mr. Griffin characterized both lawsuits as extortion; ultimately, both suits were dismissed.
Mr. Griffin consistently evaded questions about his sexuality. In a 2005 interview with The New York Times, he said: “I tell everybody that I’m a quarter-sexual. I will do anything with anybody for a quarter.”
What he was rarely reluctant to talk about was his success, particularly those ventures that produced significant portions of his wealth. When he was creating “Jeopardy,” he realized the show needed some music to fill the time while contestants were puzzling out a question. Sitting at a piano, he plunked out a few notes, then a repetitive melody, and within about a half hour had the show’s familiar theme music. He retained the rights to the song even after selling the shows, and royalties from the ditty “made me a fortune, millions,” he said in 2005.
How much?, he was asked. “Probably close to $70-80 million.”

For the Love of Xenu; Scientology!
By Mark Oppenheimer Scientology, the controversial religion whose adherents include John Travolta, Tom Cruise, and Jenna Elfman, can't seem to stay out of the news. Sometimes the church would rather not have the publicity, as when Germany, which considers Scientology a cult, recently refused to let Tom Cruise shoot scenes for his new movie in government buildings. Other times, Scientologists court the attention—as when the same Mr. Cruise brought his Scientology-influenced anti-psychiatry crusade to the Today show in 2005. Some Americans may consider Scientology perhaps a cult, maybe a violent sect, and certainly very weird. And, like many, I find the Church of Scientology odd, to say the least. But Scientology is no more bizarre than other religions. And it's the similarities between Scientology and, say, Christianity and Judaism that make us so uncomfortable. We need to hate Scientology, lest we hate ourselves. But reaching such a conclusion, as I have discovered, isn't bound to win a religion writer any friends. I recently wrote an article (subscription required) for the New York Times Magazine about Milton Katselas, the acting teacher of Giovanni Ribisi, Anne Archer, Tom Selleck, George Clooney, and many other stars. Katselas is a Scientologist, and there are those in the acting community who steer clear of his school because of its perceived connection to Scientology. (Although, to be fair, Elfman broke with Katselas because he wasn't Scientologist enough.) I also posted a podcast interview with John Carmichael, president of the Church of Scientology in New York. We talked about church founder L. Ron Hubbard, the church's hostility to the psychiatric profession, and Carmichael's own conversion, among other topics. I did not have time to ask him about many of the controversies surrounding the religion, including allegations of financial improprieties and cultlike behavior. (These charges have been aired most extensively in a Rolling Stone article that I found very persuasive, as well as in series in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.) Having decided that I'd failed to air these charges sufficiently in my article or my Carmichael interview, the anti-Scientologists pounced. The podcast, in particular, brought me heaps of scorn, eliciting posts like: "This interview was a complete abomination. … [Y]ou are ... gullible and naive. … [T]he rest of us will pay for these weaknesses," and "This is really an infomercial. You are a two-bit wanna-be entertainer & butt kisser and John Carmichael knows one when he sees one." My podcast and article were not meant to attack Scientology. Not every article about a Catholic mentions the church's pederasty scandals or its suborning of fascism under Hitler and Franco. An article about Yom Kippur observance in Hackensack need not ask Jews for their views of illegal West Bank settlements. All religious groups have something to answer for, but religion writing would be quite tedious, not to mention unilluminating, if every article were reduced to the negative charges against some co-religionists. But when it comes to Scientology, there's a hunger for the negative. I suspect that's because Scientology evinces an acute case of what Freud called the narcissism of small differences: We're made most uncomfortable by that which is most like us. And everything of which Scientology is accused is an exaggerated form of what more "normal" religions do. Does Scientology charge money for services? Yes—but the average Mormon, tithing 10 percent annually, pays more money to his church than all but the most committed Scientologists pay to theirs. Jews buying "tickets" to high-holiday services can easily part with thousands of dollars a year per family. Is Scientology authoritarian and cultlike? Yes—but mainly at the higher levels, which is true of many religions. There may be pressure for members of Scientology's elite "Sea Organization" not to drop out, but pressure is also placed on Catholics who may want to leave some cloistered orders. Does Scientology embrace pseudoscience? Absolutely—but its "engrams" and "E-meter" are no worse than what's propagated by your average Intelligent Design enthusiast. In fact, its very silliness makes it less pernicious. And what about the "Xenu" creation myth anti-Scientologists are so fond of? Scientologists have promised me that it is simply not part of their theology—some say they learned about Xenu from South Park. Several ex-Scientologists have sworn the opposite. Given his frequent conflation of science fiction, theology, and incoherent musings, I think that Hubbard may have taught that eons ago, the galactic warlord Xenu dumped 13.5 trillion beings in volcanoes on Earth, blowing them up and scattering their souls. But I'm not sure that it is an important part of Scientology's teachings. And if Xenu is part of the church's theology, it's no stranger than what's in Genesis. It's just newer and so seems weirder. Religions appear strange in inverse proportion to their age. Judaism and Catholicism seem normal—or at least not deviant. Mormonism, less than 200 years old, can seem a bit incredible. And Scientology, founded 50 years ago, sounds truly bizarre. To hear from a burning bush 3,000 years ago is not as strange as meeting the Angel Moroni two centuries ago, which is far less strange than having a hack sci-fi writer as your prophet. That's not to say that all religions are "equal" or equally deserving of respect. I'm no more a Scientologist than I am a Swedenborgian or a member of the Nation of Islam, and I do have two criticisms of Scientology that one rarely hears from Xenu-obsessed detractors. First, while the introductory Scientology costs are not outlandish (for example, a member may pay about $200 for a dozen sessions of "auditing," to start out), the fees increase as adherents gain new knowledge through advanced course work (going "up the bridge to total freedom," in Scientology-speak)—and it does make the religion resemble a pyramid or matrix scheme. More than one Scientologist explained to me that they don't have the financial resources of the Catholic Church that come from thousands of years of donations. They have to charge. Well, that's not the whole truth. The secrecy surrounding Scientology's higher levels of knowledge has no apparent analog in the Abrahamic faiths, and the steep financial outlay to get higher knowledge seems also unique. Catholicism doesn't charge people to become learned, nor does Judaism. In fact, the greatest scholars in those faiths are often revered paupers: penniless rabbis and voluntarily poor priests, monks, and nuns. Poverty is not Scientology's style, to say the least. That leads me to my second criticism: bad aesthetics! I have never been less religiously moved by ostensibly religious spaces than in Scientology buildings. Whether the Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles, the New York church off Times Square, or the local branch down the street from my house, Scientology buildings are filled with garish colors, flat-screen TVs showing silly, dull videos, and glossy pamphlets recycling the legend of the overrated L. Ron Hubbard, whom Scientologists revere as a scientist, writer, and seer of the first rank. In my opinion, Hubbard's books are bad, the movies they inspire are bad, and the derivative futuro-techno look that Scientology loves is an affront to good taste on every level. It's a religion that screams nouveau–Star Trek–riche. For those of us who seek mystery, wonder, and beauty in our religions, Scientology is a nonstarter. But good taste, as art critic Dave Hickey says, is just the residue of someone else's privilege. Catholicism has its Gothic cathedrals, Judaism its timeless Torah scrolls. Scientology is brand-new, but it has played an impressive game of catch-up. In its drive to be a major world religion, it will inevitably go through a period when its absurdities and missteps are glaringly apparent. But someday it will be old and prosaic, and there may still be Scientologists. And when some of those Scientologists embezzle, lie, and steal—as they surely will—they'll seem no worse than Christians, Jews, or Muslims who have done