Uncle Bill

One of the finest parts of my time selling Ferrari at Modern Classic Motors in Reno was Bill Harrah, better known to those of us who loved him as “Uncle Bill”. Make no mistake, I didn’t ‘know’ him in any sense of the word – in fact, I don’t believe he ever spoke a word to me – but he was in the showroom almost daily. I got to know him mostly through observation and tales told by his bodyguards and the person who’d probably known him longest, the Ferrari manager Vern Keil. My only personal encounter with the great man was a near collision, as I rounded a corner in the showroom one day and ran smack into him. I, of course, apologized profusely. He simply walked away. Vern and others who knew the man told me he was not unfriendly, he was merely painfully shy. Hard to believe, but true.

I heard so many wonderful stories, but there are only a few that I really remember and those are the subject of this story. The first comes from personal observation. When I moved to Reno to work at MCM, workers were racing 24/7 to finish the new showroom in time for a scheduled opening party. It was quite an affair – rather formal (I wore a long black slip dress and sexy Bruno Magli 1940s style open-toed pumps) and elegant. Hordes of local dignitaries were invited, the showroom was beautiful and filled with a shining example of every make we would be selling (Rolls-Royce, Ferrari, Aston Martin, BMW, Peugeot, Fiat & Lancia) except Ferrari. Even though we were distributors of Ferrari west of the Mississippi, the new 308 GTB models were scarce and we didn’t have one to put on display. Mr. Harrah had a bright red 308 as his personal car and since it was on the premises, he ordered that it be brought into the showroom. And nobody said ‘no’ to Bill Harrah.

One of the features of the new showroom was an office for Mr. Harrah that was accessed from a private garage. He could stay in that office, which I never entered, or he could enter the showroom from a door he controlled. Another feature of the showroom was its design. Because BMW insisted upon its ‘own’ showroom, the layout consisted of two round pods connected by a low-ceilinged bridge. BMW had one pod, the lower-priced cars had another pod, and the bridge area was meant to hold a Rolls and a Ferrari. The Ferrari was moved from Harrah’s private garage into the empty spot on the showroom and all was well – until the fire alarm went off, blasting loud and clear throughout the showroom and shop. To make matters worse, nobody knew how to turn it off – after all, the showroom was barely finished in time and I guess this issue hadn’t come up. We had to wait until the fire department arrived to quiet the noise. What had set it off? Heat from that mid-engine Ferrari wafting upwards through the horizontal louvers over the engine to the sensors on that low-ceiling. It wasn’t a mistake we made again.

Another from personal observation played out over the next couple of months. Harrah was known as a stickler for neatness and cleanliness and insisted that the giant service shop be cleaned from stem to stern every Friday evening. The mechanics cleaned their own areas, tools were always put away, then a team came in to do the floors. Made of polished concrete, the floors were washed and waxed every week with huge, powerful machines. Despite a sealant and every other trick the cleaners could come up with, grease stains still showed and this drove Harrah up the wall. Yes, he did check it, every week. Finally, he shut the entire service department down for a week and had the floor covered with glazed Italian terra cotta tiles. Yes, a dropped tool could chip one, but the offending tile could be and would be removed and replaced. The tiles worked – an expensive solution, but he didn’t care. Money was never an object for Bill Harrah. The floors were still washed and waxed every Friday night, but there were no more grease stains.

Harrah always traveled with a bodyguard. When he was alone, the guard rode in the car with him, but when he was with his wife or others, the bodyguards had a little 246 Dino chase car. During his visits to the showroom the on-duty bodyguard would generally come out into the showroom and visit with us and we got to know them rather well. They weren’t goons at all – they were nice men who looked like anybody else, but I would not have wanted to get in their way.

The story of the chase car is fairly well known. When the 246 Dino was first released, Harrah ordered one for himself and one for the bodyguards to use as a chase car. Over time, it became apparent that the chase car was faster than Harrah’s car. A lesser man might have insisted that they switch, but Harrah didn’t. He kept the slower car and made a game of trying to outrun the faster one until his Dino was traded off for something else. When he died I was living in Beverly Hills, and I flew back up to Reno to commiserate with some friends who cared about him. Harrah’s personal cars were cared for at the old MCM, a tiny converted garage in downtown Reno. We visited that garage during my visit, and there the famous chase car sat, for sale. I would have mortgaged my soul to buy that car, I think, but my soul wasn’t worth that much and neither was anything else I owned.

One final story – and I wish I could remember more of these. In between his many marriages Harrah was quite a ladies man. When courting a young woman he would always give her the car of her choice. Most of the time, that was easy to do. On one occasion, however, the woman requested a car that was no longer in production – I don’t remember what it was, but it was some big, flashy Detroit model from the previous year or two, and she wanted it with specific accessories in a specific color. Harrah set his auto managers to work trying to find the car in time for some specific occasion – perhaps her birthday. Finally, they located a decent car with all the right toys somewhere in southern Nevada or California, but it was the wrong color. Harrah ordered the car brought to the Harrah’s Auto Collection, which had one of the best auto body restoration shops in the world. Working around the clock, that team stripped and repainted the car the desired color and Harrah was able to present it to his lady love on time.

He was quite a man, well-respected and well-loved in Reno. He lived his life to suit himself, and while the casinos produced his fortune and fame, his first love was always his cars. The auto collection was the finest in the world, and I’m grateful I got to spend time there, see all those cars, before the collection was sold off after his death. I’m also grateful I got to know the man, if only from the outside.