I call this the Jay Leno starter kit so he says basically hey man you know if you like cars you can invest in them and when you sell them if you sell them you'll make money on them but you get to enjoy your investment it's like Bitcoin you can drive hello my name is Gabriel Iglesias that's Iglesias if you have an accent or Iglesias if you don't we are here at my compound in beautiful Long Beach California this is basically a glorified man cave I call it a one bedroom 80 car garage it's a big glorified multi-purpose room my first car was a 1968 Volkswagen bus that my brother helped to get me uh probably cost about 400 bucks at the time I want to say it was like 16 17. I had the car for a couple years I pushed it I drove it I ran out of gas in it I mean none of the gauges worked I knew how fast I was going if I was next to another car and I could see their speedometer I'd ask the guy to like how fast were you going okay cool now I know I can go 30.
It was my first car and you always fall in love with your first car and so uh years later when I was I was hanging out with Jay Leno Jay's guys this car his car guys he's got guys he knows people they said hey if you're ever looking for a car in particular let us know we'll see what we can do for you they called me the next day and they had a bus and I was like Wow and then they said if you want anything else let me know and I said well if you come across something let me know and they called me the next day and so basically we were playing this game back and forth for about a year and it took a little under a year to collect all these buses all right this is the one that started it all this is the 1968 Volkswagen bay window bus my original bus looked like this in my dreams it was actually gray and white but did not look like this this is the car that I wanted to get back it's very different and the design inside it's a lot more a lot more fluffy friendly if you will my first car was a 1968 bay window which is different than these these are all split windows and mine has the full windshield the seats are back just a little bit more and it handles a little bit better than the let's say the split window that's a 1956 next to a 1968 so clearly you could see the evolution there this is the Ironman bus the color scheme on it is very different than buses that are out there it's very very custom if Iron Man got converted into a Volkswagen bus that's what it would look like a little homage to uh Mr Tony Stark as you can tell the height difference uh this is the standard height right here and then this is the lowered you know people say oh why'd you mess it up you lowered it it looks cool and I got a couple others that are the right height so hit all you want buses back in the day didn't exactly have this much Chrome on them I kind of went a little Chrome happy so anywhere I could put Chrome there's Chrome that's Mexican in me but anyway the wheels are Porsche Alloys back in the day there was no options for Volkswagens you you pretty much had to just go with Porsche Parts if you had Porsche Alloys on your car you were doing something right that was your like ooh but now there's like a million different kinds of Wheels you could put in your car but back in the day four shallow is the only way to go and yes the Porsche logo is on there because yeah you got the bay window back in the day because that's what you could afford the split windows are the price difference is huge so for example a 1967 in this condition probably at one of those auctions they'll go from anywhere from 100 to 150 000 whereas a bay window one year later you can get for about 25k they made more more cartoons and more things with that the bay window look versus the split window but these are unmistakable there's nothing that looks like them all right behind me is a 1967 camper it originally started off white and we decided to kind of have some fun with it these are like very much in the vein of the Bentley colors we wanted to have something to give it a little bit more class a little more style make it you know a little nicer it was just plain white I bought it from a guy in Germany who bought it from a guy in California so this bus started off in California went to Germany and then came back to California this is a straight up camper This was meant for outings and don't get me wrong I'm sure you could live in the other ones too but this one actually has a bed in the back it's got you know wood cabinets the original one had a little baby stove in it and a little cooler I had it taken out because I ain't gonna make no grilled cheese in there I got a form and Grill it's got curtains and it's it's actually really really comfortable I wanted to make sure that if I if I redid the camper that it had enough power to go up if I ever wanted to take it to Big Bear so it's ready to go how does it make me feel to drive a Volkswagen bus well first of all you're up really high these were out before SUVs anytime you get an SUV you always feel above and you can see down on everybody and kind of the same thing you get one of these you're cruising you have no blind spots in these things so you can see everything it's all coming at you right there there's no hood so unfortunately if you hit something you have about two inches of metal between you and whatever you hit the question was asked by Jay Leno why so many of the same car he goes it's boring you're buying the same car it's the same car same car same car thing and I'm like Jay I go when people see these now now it's kind of like a brand association thing they're always sending me pictures of buses and hey look at this one my cousin's selling one and so they know me now as the bus guy it's really cool that I've Associated myself with such an iconic thing I am standing here right in front of this beautiful 1959 23 window bus I got this bus about three years ago the guy who does all my Restorations he showed up here one day in this car and uh he left walking because I bought it off of him that day yeah it was already pimped out it was good to go and I think he did that on purpose pretty sure he did that on purpose the biggest difference between this 1959 and this one next to me is the 1967.
They look very similar but uh as you could tell the turn signal lights one is flat looks like an egg the other one kind of has like a little nipple I don't know if I could say nipple on GQ but yeah I don't know who's nipple but somebody's nipple that's what it looks like so uh most of my buses have uh roof racks and that's that's an accessory it's an option I just thought it looked cool you know I don't really put stuff up there but it is you can it's earrings pimped out earrings they're really pretty not not so much practical but pretty the trucks were made for you know just like now someone goes out and buys an F-150 they got to work they got things to do they did not look like that back in the day uh I had Chrome put all over them they probably did not have Chrome back in the day when they were being used for work there's a lot of uh compartments in there so you know you stick your tools it's they're working trucks when I got them uh they were they were they were being used for work so I had to clean them up a lot this truck right here it's a single cab and uh when I first got it I got catfish this is why I tell people you got to go see the cars for yourselves make sure you take someone with you so you can get a second pair of eyes if you're going to invest a lot of money into one of these I bought this thing it was a mess it was crooked it was it was it was more crooked than my last account this this thing was just bent it was all messed up like the whole body was tweaked out and then they they used a lot of filters in the photos and I'm like this is a great deal and then the guy goes you know you don't got to do much to it okay okay and once the check cleared yeah apparently I did I had to basically put you know three times the amount into that truck to straighten the body and then paint it and then make it look the way that it does the beauty of it is that it actually runs really well now it handles great it doesn't just look pretty it is pretty this rack right here it it actually was uh covered up it looks kind of like a tent reminds me of those old school uh movies where they show the guys in Vietnam and everybody's in the back and it's just covered up I had it taken off because it wasn't it didn't look pretty so I I you know I just left it like this and it just gave it a little style put some wood on it Paint It Black it's nice all right well this one it's a little bit easier to see it has a little bit of a rag top on it okay this one doesn't it was an option back then and this one had one so yeah it's kind of cool you could open it up you could stand up in it you have a bunch of people in the car one of them kind of smells a little you open up your rag top air it out it's beautiful thing who drives a Volkswagen bus someone who just likes to smile and have fun like if you're behind the wheel of one of these buses and you're like like you got up you're making faces and you look like you're mad then life just did not work out for you and no matter what you do you're not going to be happy unless it broke you know broke down and then you got to push it then you can make that face but when you're driving one of these you just it feels good you pop open the windows in the front the air hits your face it's just you know you're smiling it's it it's great it's a great feeling all right let me show you a little something here the windows pop out foreign so if you're going about 15 miles an hour that's that's pretty awesome right there people think it's just gonna put putt but no that'll you'll pass people but you got to be careful too because you're very top heavy so you know you got to remember that it's not made to go that fast so the fish tanks got made uh by a television show called tanked so they showed up here and they're like hey man we heard you like Volkswagen buses what do you think of if we make you a you know fish tank out of a bus to take a bus and cut it in half and convert them into a fish tank like Volkswagen people saw that and they're like cringing because these are masterpieces however the bus that we got came from Brazil and Brazilian buses are known as Frankenstein buses because they take different years and put a bus together so like they'll use the front end of a 67 and the rear end of a 73 and just put them together and so those buses were not as valuable as the other ones and so we were able to get one really really cheap they chopped it and that's what you see right there [Music] this started off as just like it's cool to have one or two but then I was obsessed with filling the space and then putting up all the artwork on the walls and then just making it look cool and at one point I go I got a little Museum here and then I actually painted on the wall that it's a museum the mural in the background is uh the Wolfsburg plant in Wolfsburg Germany but that was the original one right there and I had the pleasure of visiting uh that plant which is still there looks just like that the idea for the travel posters uh basically it's a lot of the places that I've performed clearly I haven't driven the buses there but since it's a museum and I'm trying to make it part of a thing each one is a different place that I've performed or I plan on performing so like for example I've done shows in in Dubai Kuala Lumpur Montreal I've been in Paris Oslo Norway Mexico haven't been to Marine Colombia but I'm working on it Pablo Escobar is in the back of that truck I you know I was having a little fun I was bored so I told the artist if they could put Pablo Escobar in the back of the uh the truck because they were always sneaking them around back in the day got some special special cargo yeah glad you noticed this collection alone has drawn people from all over the world to come down to want to see it document it and take pictures and just you know talk about it and and feature it I've managed to make my own little Mexican Graceland here between the Volkswagens and all my memorabilia so it's it's pretty cool [Music]
