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$28.8-Million Deal One of Biggest Ever : Lyon Buys 82 Cars From Famed Harrah’s Collection

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Times Staff Writer

Orange County developer William Lyon has bought 82 cars from the famous Harrah automobile collection for $28.8 million, doubling the value of his own classic car collection, Reno-based Harrah’s said Friday.

Lyon’s purchase, believed to be one of the largest acquisitions of its kind in history, includes a 1931 Bugatti Royale Coupe de Ville--one of only six built and regarded by many classic auto experts as the most valuable car in the world.

The sale is the fourth--and probably the last--of the Harrah collection. Before his death in 1978, William Fisk Harrah, founder of the casino and restaurant business that bears his name, had acquired 1,800 classic autos--a collection believed at one time to be the largest in the world. When Holiday Corp. bought Harrah’s in 1980, the car collection was included.

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“The car collection wasn’t self-supporting,” Gene Evans, marketing director of the William F. Harrah Automobile Museum, said Friday. The museum is situated in Sparks, Nev., just east of Reno. In three previous sales of cars from the collection, Harrah’s, now a subsidiary of Memphis, Tenn.-based Holiday, has grossed about $40 million, Evans said.

The new sale to Lyon did not include another 75 cars and two antique planes--a World War I 1917 Jenny and a 1937 Aero Sport. Those vehicles are to be donated to the William F. Harrah Automobile Foundation, which will keep the cars on display in the Reno area.

Announcement of Lyon’s purchase came in the same week that auto racing enthusiast Briggs Cunningham sold his 71-car collection of historic automobiles and permanently closed his automotive museum in Costa Mesa. The buyer of that collection, a collector in Palm Beach, Fla., will be moving the collection to an automotive museum now under construction in his state.

Major Southland Builder

Lyon, until last month, was chairman and the largest shareholder of AirCal. He and a partner sold the airline to American Airlines for $225 million in November.

An intensely private man and antique car buff, Lyon, 63, is a major Southern California builder and chief executive of William Lyon Co. His present collection of 35 classic autos is valued at roughly $26 million and includes actress Dolores del Rio’s 1930 Duesenberg SJ Murphy Town Car and a 1935 Model SJ Walker-LeGrande Duesenberg.

Lyon could not be reached Friday but his accountant, Stan Ross of Kenneth Leventhal & Co. of Los Angeles, said he suspects that Lyon will display the cars. If Lyon does publicly display the cars in California, it will be a departure from his previous way of operating. While some of his cars have occasionally been displayed at auto shows, he typically has been reticent about revealing the scope of his collection.

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Lyon is an unusual collector of vintage cars because he regularly drives the vehicles. “My attitude is that these cars originally were made to be driven, so I put them to their intended purpose,” he said in an interview last fall. “If I couldn’t drive a car, I wouldn’t want it.”

Part of the condition of the sale, which was completed Dec. 31, was that the buyer would permit five of the rarest cars to continue to be displayed in the Reno area some of the time for the next seven years. “It’s to appease the natives,” Evans said, explaining that Harrah’s plans to dispose of the vehicles have been a source of public irritation and outcry in Reno for the past several years.

The five cars:

- 1931 Bugatti Royale Coupe de Ville, which Harrah’s reportedly valued at a minimum of $12 million. - 1929 Duesenberg Dual-Cowl Phaeton that was used in the motion picture “Annie.”

- A rare 1929 Mercedes-Benz Drop Head Coupe.

- 1929 Miller Indianapolis race car that became a prototype for later models.

- 1933 Duesenberg SJ Boattail Speedster that has only 1,750 miles on its odometer.

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