Jay Leno has probably driven one of the widest assortments of old and classic cars by any standards, and he’s still adding to that knowledge. This time, his experience bar went up more than one level, after he drove the very cool 1910 Buick “Bug” racecar, a very early streamliner that was purpose-built back in the day to go racing.

It’s powered by an overhead-valve four-cylinder engine that displaced 622 cubic inches or just over 10 liters (the capacity of ten of these).

Power was rated at 57 hp, but it probably made much more torque than that meager figure would suggest, as was the case with these early big-bore automotive engines – top speed was declared to be over 100 mph or 160 km/h.

The coolest part of the car are probably the four side exhausts which can spew anything from a little bit of blue smoke to proper, visible flames.

One can only imagine what it must have been like to drive this atypical Buick flat out close to its top speed, with tires that skinny and suspension that rudimentary…

By Andrei Nedelea

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