DRIVING AMBITION : Maharajah, Ex-King Owned Autos in Developer’s Classic Car Collection
It sounds a little crazy at first, but you really have to feel a bit sorry for John Sobers. Here is a guy who has a 1941 Packard 120 coupe, a 1948 Packard woody sedan, a 1962 Thunderbird sports roadster and three other gorgeous cars sitting at home, just begging for him to tinker with them, shine them up, tool around town in them. Cars most mortals would drool over. Cars some people would sell their kids for. The kinds of cars that the devil uses to cut deals for souls.
And if that weren’t enough, John has a job that allows him to work with cars in one of the most immaculate garages this side of an operating theater.
But here is the problem: That garage is attached to a room that contains a collection of automobiles so breathtaking that it makes John’s pale in comparison. And John has to live with them and work on them nearly every day.
There they sit, spotless, gleaming, regal--row after row of Deusenbergs and Packards and Rolls-Royces, vintage Lincolns and Cadillacs and Mercedes Benzes and Bugattis, along with an adjacent garage packed with modern sports cars so fast that they ought to be fitted with altimeters.
In all, 55 of the most magnificent cars ever bolted together. And all the pink slips bear the same name: William Lyon.
Lyon, a retired Air Force general and the chairman of the real estate development company that carries his name, amassed the collection over 27 years, beginning with a single 1935 Packard V-12 convertible and building up from there with a combination of an eye for automotive beauty, ready money and a few bits of significant horse trading, including one deal in which he bought 82 cars from the famed Harrah’s collection in 1986.
There are other car collectors in Orange County, and some of them own several beautiful and rare automobiles that they keep lovingly at home in multicar garages. But none of them have collections vast enough to warrant storing them behind black velvet ropes in a 15,000-square-foot white brick, American Colonial-style museum with a pillared portico, red brick floors, a parts storage room, a spotless maintenance garage and a display turntable.
To say that Lyon appears never to do anything in a small way seems to be stating the obvious even before you lay eyes on his car collection. To get to the museum, it is necessary first to gain entrance to Lyon’s immense Coto de Caza estate through a huge, electronically operated guard gate and then to drive up to his home through the sprawling, park-like grounds, past the stables, riding ring and lake, up the long circular driveway and around to the back of the 20,000-square-foot mansion.
And there, behind the mansion, is the museum, brilliantly white, brightly landscaped, with a tall flagpole in front.
And a fortune in automobiles inside.
Lyon doesn’t like to talk about the value of his collection, preferring to steer the conversation toward the beauty and rarity of the cars rather than their price tags. And classic car experts say that it is impossible to place a dollar value on many of the cars because they are either one of a kind or nearly so. Still, by any yardstick, the collection is immensely valuable.
“In terms of being one-of-a-kind, unique, special cars,” he said, “the collection has been rated by other people as one of the top five in the world.”
Here, then, is a rundown of some of the most remarkable cars:
A 1931 Bugatti Royale Coupe de Ville. Lyon calls this land yacht of a car “sort of the prize of the collection,” and with good reason, for it is the sort of automobile that exhausts superlatives. A gigantic car, with an overall length of 22 feet and wheels measuring 3 feet in diameter, it sits on an electric turntable facing the entrance to the museum. The chauffeur’s compartment in the front is open to the air, while the passenger cab far in the rear is encased in bulletproof glass. The hood ornament is a solid silver, rearing elephant.
This deep blue and silver monster was built, Lyon said, for a king of Romania. But, he added, “it took them so long to build it, by the time they delivered it, the king had been deposed.”
It is one of only six such cars left in the world.
A 1908 Simplex. Bright white with gleaming brass fixtures, this early American car was produced in very limited quantities, Lyon said. He added, however, that even though it was built during the auto industry’s infancy, it could reach a speed of 80 m.p.h.
A 1930 Marmon 16. This car is a kind of successor to the early Marmon in which silent film star Bebe Daniels was arrested for speeding in Orange County in 1921. The arrest touched off a legal comic circus and accorded Daniels the dubious honor of being the first woman convicted of speeding in Orange County. She was driving her Marmon at 56.5 m.p.h. when she was stopped. Lyon said his was originally guaranteed by the maker to do 100, “but I don’t think I’d want to go 100 m.p.h. in it,” he added.
A 1933 Deusenberg Wayman Speedster. An extremely rare, supercharged car, it was previously owned by the honorary fire chief of Lake Tahoe, Lyon said, which explains the red light and siren mounted in front of the grille. Unlike many other cars in the collection, which have been painstakingly restored, every part of this immaculate car is completely original.
A 1930 Deusenberg limousine. Originally owned by film actress Dolores del Rio, this long battleship of a car features a dove gray rear cab interior fitted with art deco furnishings and even original Lucky Strikes in a wall-mounted cigarette case. The hood ornament is a cut Lalique crystal eagle (made in Paris, Lyon said).
A 1929 Deusenberg dual cowl phaeton. A birthday present from Lyon’s wife, this car was the first “J” series Deusenberg ever made (Deusenberg made about 400 cars, nearly 200 of which are still in existence, eight of those in Lyon’s museum). It was originally shown by the Deusenberg brothers at the 1928 Chicago Auto Show.
A 1936 Deusenberg two-seater. The last of the “J” series cars, this bright orange-and-black sports model was originally owned by an Indian maharajah, according to Lyon. The maharajah had the front fenders fitted with red and blue lights, which were lit to indicate whether the car was being driven by him or his wife “so that everybody knew when to get out of the way,” Lyon added.
A 1935 Packard V-12. This is the car with which Lyon began his collection in 1961. It is a deep-red, four-door convertible with thermostatically controlled louvers in the grille that open automatically when the engine heats up.
A 1953 Mercedes Benz 300S. Bright red and spotless, “this is the car I drove to work for many years,” Lyon said. The trunk was fitted by the factory with a full set of leather luggage.
A 1948 Lincoln Continental. Another car that is “original in every respect.” Its first owner was Henry Ford II. The odometer shows 20,000 original miles.
A 1949 Delahaye sedan. This streamlined French car is the only one of its kind in the world. Its steering wheel and instrument panel are plated in 18-karat gold.
A 1936 Mercedes Benz 540K. This car, Lyon said, rated a perfect score of 100 at the Classic Car Club show held in Northern California in July. Lyon said he intends to show it and a 1939 model 540K at the Concours d’Elegance car show in Newport Beach this Sunday.
A 1960 Shelby Cobra. Jet black, this car looks like it is speeding along even when the engine is off. “It’s the fastest street car in the world,” Lyon said. How fast? “Faster than I’d ever want to go. It’s unbelievable.”
Still, he does drive it. In fact, he said, he drives them all at one time or another, mostly on weekends.
“You can’t just leave these cars sitting around,” he said. “You’ve got to get them out and exercise ‘em.”
And you have to keep them in show-quality shape, which brings us back, in part, to John Sobers. A collection the size and complexity of Lyon’s needs a skilled mechanic familiar with classic automobiles--and Sobers is that man. The mechanic who once worked on the extensive car collection of Jack Nethercutt, head of Merle Norman cosmetics, Sobers must leave his own fine cars each working day to tend to the hundreds of valves, cylinders, rods, rocker arms, carburetors, radiators and springs in the Lyon museum. An indication of the scope of his job lies in his title, which is not that of mechanic, but curator.
The detail man for the collection is Greg Pagano, who sees to the cosmetic side of things. It is Pagano’s job to make sure the cars look as good as they run.
Both men, full-time employees at the museum, work in a garage so immaculate that grease looks like a foreign substance. And both have access to a large room filled with parts gleaned from throughout the world.
One big perk: When Lyon isn’t driving the cars, someone else has to do it. That means Sobers.
“They’re enjoyable to drive,” Sobers said, “although while it’s happening I’m looking for things that might need attention, so that when the general gets in the automobiles, they’re pretty much de-bugged for him to enjoy.”
The Deusenbergs, he said, “are very truck-ish--cumbersome, so to speak. They were really built for flash and speed. The Packards are very easy to drive. My favorite, I think, is the 1930 Packard Speedster. It starts immediately, hot or cold, and it’s a simple, straightforward car.”
The exotic sports cars, he said, need close mechanical attention, but “they have tremendous power and you have to be very careful” when driving them.
Mostly, Sobers added, the cars are driven around within the guard-gated confines of Coto de Caza. Occasionally, however, when a car needs to be opened up a bit, it will be taken out on broad Santa Marguerita Parkway and given its head.
And, Sobers said, occasionally Lyon will drive one of them to his office in Newport Beach.
“The people around (Coto de Caza) are used to seeing us drive them around,” Sobers said, “but when we get out on Santa Marguerita, they turn a few heads.”
Which, in a way, Lyon says, is why he began collecting in the first place.
“I’ve been fooling around with cars ever since I was 10, and I had Model T’s and Model A’s as a teen,” Lyon said. “I grew up in West L.A. at the height of the Depression and I saw that the movie stars in the area had these wonderful kinds of cars, but it was fairly rare to see them. It became obvious to me that those cars were the sorts of things that would never lose their beauty.”
Of all his 55 cars--the eight Deusenbergs, the nine Packards, the Rolls-Royces, the Bugattis, the Cadillacs, the Mercedes Benzes, the Delahaye and the Cobra and the newest set of exotic high-ticket wheels, a Ferrari Testarossa--does Lyon have a favorite?
Yes, he says, and sentimental value is the reason: the 1929 Deusenberg dual cowl phaeton.
“That,” he says, “is the one my wife gave me.”
As for Sobers, don’t feel too sorry for him. While he acknowledges--rightly or wrongly--that his own cars are “nothing really spectacular,” he says he thinks he has a car nut’s dream job.
“I think every (collector) would like to be able to step up and have these automobiles (in the Lyon collection),” Sobers said. “But on the other hand, I get to admire them and drive them and be around them all the time without actually having to buy and own them.”
