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(Above) Tony Whitney, president of the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada, and Jim Kenzie, chairman of the 2003 Car of the Year competition, presented Bill Roebuck, editor of www.cartest.ca, with the runner-up award for the Jacques Rainville Best Website at the association's annual awards banquet in October 2002.
Of CarTest.ca, the judges said it "has superb editorial content. The site presents a humorous and irreverent side yet still provides excellent valuable information that is conveyed in a highly informative fashion.
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(Above) Tony Ensor, Vice-President and General Manager of Pirelli Tire, presents plaque to Bill Roebuck, runner up of the 2005 Pirelli Photography Award (Unpublished), at the AJAC awards ceremony in October 2005.
Awards
Website Awards
2003 Jacques Rainville Best Website Award (Runner-up)
* Note: AJAC's Best Website Award was not held after 2003.
Photography Awards
2003 Nikon Automotive Photography Award (Bill Roebuck, Runner-up, Unpublished Category)Photo: Nissan 350Z with oil refinery in background, Oakville, Ont.
2004 Nikon Automotive Photography Award (Bill Roebuck, Runner-up, Published Category)Photo: Ford Mustang GT with "GT" rail car in background, Oakville, Ont.
2005 Pirelli Automotive Photography Award (Bill Roebuck, Runner-up, Unpublished Category)Photo: Ford Mustang Convertible dashboard with symmetrical air vents.
Almost as good as winning an award
CarTest's editor, Bill Roebuck, gets the squeeze from NBC Tonight Show host Jay Leno at an event during the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit in 2003. Leno is a well-known car aficionado, collector and mechanic.Somewhere in Southern California is Leno's Big Dog Garage. Spread across two low-slung buildings is one of the world's great car collections and one of the world's best-equipped garages custom-built from the ground up to keep everything running in tip-top shape.
The garage itself is about 17,000 square feet, which is enough space to work on about a dozen cars at any one given time. About a quarter of that space is taken up by a machine shop, which includes a massive amount of equipment.
The garage is geared up to fabricate parts and do just about all required work in-house: a CNC Mill, a water jet cutter, sheet metal equipment, a lathe, a regular mill, and welding equipment from Tig to Mig.
Leno makes his purchases not as museum pieces, but because he enjoys driving the cars and motorcycles… all of them! From Stanley Steamers to Duesenbergs to McLarens, he and his collection are fixtures in the Southern California area and can often be spotted out for weekend rides – and the occasional breakdown on the side of the road.
As a whole, the collection spans 100 years of automotive history. The oldest cars are a 1906 Baker electric car and a 1906 Stanley Steamer, while the newest is a 2006 Corvette. The collection also has a number of rare cars, such as a Monteverde, a Bugatti Atlantic, and a turbine motorcycle. But perhaps the most special car in the collection is a 1955 Buick. Not only is it the first car Jay purchased, it was the car he came to California in.
The previous text is adapted from the introduction to Jay Leno's Garage, a website devoted to Leno's automotive interests. One of the greatest things about the website is the list of cars -- when you click on the photos, you get a video tour of the cars, either by Leno himself or one of his mechanics, and sometimes he takes you for a ride as well as for a look under the hood. There's even a track spinout with Leno at the wheel of his Porsche GT.
Like photography? Need photography? Check out the images at Stephen H. Hess Photography.