6/7/04

The Biggest Little Car Collection In The World

Part 1

our significant other thinks you’ve got too many old cars, huh? Imagine how William Harrah’s six wives felt while he was dragging home nearly 1500 vehicles—which ultimately filled three huge warehouses outside of Reno, Nevada. Bill was a genuine car guy, by all accounts, whose collecting goal was to own one example of every type of car ever made. He almost made it, too. When he died at age 67, fewer than 60 vehicles remained on his ambitious wish list.

Bill Harrah's good taste obviously extended to competition cars. The seldom-seen Swamp Rat 20 was campaigned near the end of the 1974 season, after which Bill Harrah called with an offer that Don Garlits could not refuse. The original Army Monza was drag racing's most-dominant single vehicle since the Greer, Black & Prudhomme fueler, winning six of eight NHRA national events in 1975, while cracking both the five-second and 240-mph barriers (5.98; 241.53).

Unfortunately for us, when the legendary hotelier checked out in 1978, he left no specific instructions for the fate of the world-renowned Harrah Collection, which had opened to the public in 1962 and attracted its millionth visitor by 1970. Thus, his 1400-plus cars and

ADVERTISEMENT

trucks went to the Holiday Corporation (parent of Holiday Inns), along with the assets of Harrah’s hospitality empire, in 1980.

You might recall the ruckus raised at the time by noted journalists and serious collectors, led by the late Autoweek publisher, Leon Mandel (who also wrote the definitive Harrah biography, “William Fisk Harrah: The Life and Times of a Gambling Magnate”). Both Mandel and Autoweek had long been based in Reno, so the potential breakup of America’s greatest automobile collection hit particularly hard and close to home. A nonprofit organization was quickly formed to both raise money and pressure Holiday Corp. to postpone selling off the most-important vehicles