This article originally appeared in the September 2025 issue of THE SHOP magazine.
By Mike Madriaga
As the 2024 SEMA Show brightened up the Las Vegas Convention Center with 3-foot stacks protruding from high-powered engine bays, ginormous chrome wheels and glittery, iridescent paint jobs, a few auto enthusiasts took a nostalgic detour into a place that offered examples of even more eccentric builds.
This hidden gem could only be described as a Hollywood time machine.
About 4 miles south of the convention center sits the Hollywood Cars Museum and Liberace Garage. At this sprawling, 30,000-square-foot museum, the name says it all. It features dozens of iconic vehicles from movies and TV shows across eras.
Boomers will go bananas for the Herbie replica, aka The Love Bug, and its stretch limo variation parked nearby, complete with the same racing stripe and a custom velvet tuck-and-roll interior. Gen Xers might marvel at the original “RoboCop” car or the General Lee. And millennials can geek out over Paul Walker’s bright green Mitsubishi Eclipse from “The Fast and the Furious,” complete with faux bullet holes from the scene where Vin Diesel’s character yells “NOS!” just before the car goes “boom.” The red-colored RX-7 that won the first race in the movie is parked next to the Eclipse.
“These were actual stunt cars from the first ‘The Fast and the Furious’ film,” recalls the museum’s curator and property manager, Steve Levesque. “I was with Michael Dezer, the owner (of the museum and property it sits on), in Burbank, California, when these were just sitting out in an alley. And now, we’ve been offered a lot of money for these cars. A lot. And the owner goes, ‘Nah, we’ll hang on to them.’”
AN ACTUAL CAR COMMUNITY
In 2006, Dezer purchased the Tropicana Industrial Center 10-acre lot with garages and shops for an undisclosed price. The museum in the middle of the industrial center just off Dean Martin Drive isn’t just a static showpiece of pop culture history—it’s nestled among about 60 garages and shops, where dedicated mechanics, builders and auto specialists help revive vehicles, some of which are the iconic cars the museum hauls in.
“We utilize the tenants here when we have minor repair issues,” Levesque says. “For example, Art of J’s Tires handles tire replacements for museum cars—a regular occurrence.”
The complex also has a collision center and a car wash to keep the museum vehicles shiny, and is also home to an array of auto repair shops including some specializing in off-road, European and Japanese cars.
One shop on-site is where renowned Hollywood movie car builder Jay Ohrberg created some of the museum’s standout pieces. Ohrberg’s genius is evident in builds like the replica flying AMC Matador Coupe with jet engine effects from “The Man with the Golden Gun,” a James Bond movie.
In the 1974 film, Roger Moore, who played Bond, faces off against Christopher Lee’s Scaramanga, who drives and flies the AMC car-plane. “The original didn’t survive filming,” Levesque explains, “so Jay built this replica here. Those are real airplane wings.”
Another Ohrberg creation on location is a tribute to Doc Hudson from Disney and Pixar’s “Cars,” styled like a cartoon-esque 1951 Hudson Hornet with windshield decals resembling eyes.
“The joke is, ‘This wasn’t used in the movie,’ because, of course, the original movie was animated,” Levesque quips.
The museum also houses two versions of K.I.T.T. from the television show “Knight Rider.” A heavily modified “Super Pursuit Mode” version features wide fenders, spoilers, wings and hidden compartments that opened in the TV show to slow K.I.T.T. down. Nearby sits a standard black-on-black version. Ohrberg built both on location and contributed to the build of the original cars used in the 1980s hit starring David Hasselhoff.
Levesque introduces another jaw-dropping vehicle built by Ohrberg—a 38-foot-long, pink Mercedes-Benz convertible limousine with a heart-shaped jacuzzi in the back.
“This was featured on ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,’” Levesque says. The car, based on a Mercedes-Benz W116 chassis, was once used by Pebbles, a 1980s R&B singer, as she performed her hit, “Mercedes Boy.” Robin Leach, host of the TV show, estimated the custom limo’s worth at $1 million—a small fortune in 1987.
VEHICLES WITH HISTORY
While not built on-site, other vehicles in the museum come with fascinating backstories.
“The A-Team” van is an original stunt vehicle used in high-speed scenes featuring Mr. T. A “Back to the Future” DeLorean replica sports a flux capacitor and time-travel keypad. Meanwhile, an authentic “Starsky & Hutch” 1976 Ford Gran Torino showcases the original camera rigging used for intense chase scenes.
Then there’s the epic, orange-colored vehicle with “01” on the sealed doors.
“Our General Lee is an authentic production car that was one of the stunt cars in ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’ TV show that they would jump,” Levesque says. “It has no motor, but they would tow and fling it. Sometimes into a barn. And then they would fix it and do it again. But that’s why the 1968 and ’69 Dodge Chargers are so expensive, because ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’ destroyed so many of them. They destroyed like hundreds. So even a crappy one nowadays is like $50,000.”
The museum has two Batmobiles and a Bat Cycle for comic book fans. One Batmobile, licensed by George Barris, served as a promotional vehicle for the 1966 “Batman” TV series, while the other is one of 18 cars used in the film “Batman Returns” starring Michael Keaton.
Beyond the silver screen, the museum features additional automotive oddities, such as a 12-foot-tall roller skate hot rod painted like an American flag commissioned for fashion icon Marc Jacobs. A matching red, white and blue Rolls Royce from Liberace’s collection sits in the next room.
STAR-STUDDED RIDES
The museum transitions seamlessly into Liberace’s crystal-studded vehicles, matched to his opulent outfits worn at his sold-out concerts, which are on display in glass cases.
Levesque gestures to a Swarovski crystal-covered Rolls Royce. “This car alone, without the crystals, is worth over a million dollars. It’s the same one Liberace drove in Palm Springs.”
Another standout is a white hot rod fused with a working grand piano, built in and by the museum as a tribute to Liberace’s flamboyant style.
The Liberace portion of the museum also doubles as a venue for classy events.
While the Hollywood Cars Museum and Liberace Garage in Las Vegas offers an intimate collection, Dezer’s primary trove resides in Dezerland Park in Orlando, Florida, a sprawling 800,000-square-foot complex with about 2,000 historic cars, a Batcave, a skating rink and bowling alley, a movie theater and more, Levesque reveals.
“He’s also got the world’s largest collection of James Bond vehicles and memorabilia,” Levesque says of the facility’s owner. “He’s got the Golden Gun, he’s got Oddjob’s hat and he’s got full-size airplanes in the museum there.”
Dezer, a prominent real estate developer from Florida and New York, initially envisioned luxury condominium towers for the Las Vegas site when he first purchased it in the mid-2000s, explains Levesque. However, when the economy crashed in 2008, those plans changed. The industrial center, originally dating back to the mid-1970s, found new life as a hub for automotive-related businesses, accommodating local mechanics, technicians and other entrepreneurs.
Levesque and Dezer linked up about a decade ago, and just like the special DMC DeLorean in the museum represents, the duo’s trajectory set up the Hollywood time machine in Las Vegas for us to see and enjoy for years to come.
The Hollywood Cars Museum and Liberace Garage (hollywoodcarsmuseum.com) offers a nostalgic trip through entertainment history, giving fans a chance to relive the magic of the screen in real life. Admission is just $20, and kids get in free with paid adults. Add in ample free parking outside and a trip there is a “Gone in 60 Seconds” steal.
Mike Madriaga is an award-winning multimedia journalist who has created content for a variety of media outlets. From 2000-06, he owned and managed Team Prototype, a world-renowned auto fabrication shop in San Diego that built dozens of car show winners, magazine cover vehicles and SEMA projects.
