Reno, Nev. » The stars’ cars are here, displayed in all their glory in the spotlight.

There is John Wayne’s vintage ’53 Corvette. There are also James Dean’s ’49 Mercury, Elvis’s ’73 Cadillac and Jack Benny’s famed Maxwell, at home in Reno, Nev., at the National Automobile Museum, known familiarly as the Harrah Collection.

And if you are old enough to remember Benny’s reliable Maxwell, you will likely recall the famed "Let Hertz Put You in the Driver’s Seat" television ad, featuring an all-American businessman floating through the air and landing as gently as a feather into the front seat of a moving rental car. The once much-mocked commercial is presented on a television monitor posted above a re-created, life-size 1950s-era street.

The museum staff refuses to tag the collection as the biggest or best in the nation, but with more than 200 vintage vehicles, it has to be right up there. Would-be mechanical engineer and pioneering casino owner William Fisk Harrah learned to drive in 1919 (he was 8) and began collecting cars in 1948 (he was 37). With an eye toward authenticity and with lots of contacts in show business, Harrah amassed one of the world’s most respected car collections.

Period streetscapes, such as the avenue from Beaver Cleaver’s childhood, prevent the museum from being simply a behemoth indoor parking lot. There are other such tableaux, including a 1930s Miami Beach boulevard, as well as a turn-of-the-last-century village smithy scene replete with sounds of clanging hammer and chirping birds in a re-created countryside venue. Blacksmiths didn’t fade to black after the introduction of the horseless carriage. Many became the world’s first auto mechanics.

THE museum is arranged chronologically in four galleries devoted to periods in automotive history. Blacksmiths were not the only professions to morph into a new field. The earliest automobile manufacturers, as one learns in the museum’s Gallery 1 (1892-1913), also adapted their previous professions to fit the burgeoning industry.

Logically, some of them, such as the Pope Manufacturing Co., the Dodge brothers and entrepreneur Thomas B. Jeffrey, went from making bicycles to crafting cars. Jeffrey, for example, founded the stalwart Rambler and made his first, a one-cylinder automobile, around 1900. On view is one of Jeffrey’s 1912 Ramblers, known at the time for easy maintenance because most major repairs could be made without removing parts from the chassis and crankcase.

Yet some entered the auto business from more unlikely fields. George N. Pierce & Co., creators of the Pierce-Arrow, made tricycles, refrigerators and bird cages. The White Motor Co. fabricated sewing machines, skates and phonographs before tackling steam engines. The company’s 1909 Model O occupies is exhibited as evidence of the once proud but impractical steam automotive industry.

Celebrity cars are in abundance, beginning with a bulky, bumpy, blustery Philion, a primeval relic dating from 1892, with exposed metal wheels and a steam boiler situated between the front and back seats. With a maximum speed of 8 miles per hour, the Philion’s boiler ensured a torrid drive, even in the face of a summer breeze. Its very awkwardness might have been one of the factors making the Philion perfect for supporting roles in two movies: Red Skelton’s "Excuse My Dust" (1951) and Orson Welles’s "The Magnificent Ambersons" (1942).

John Wayne bought the 51st Corvette ever built, a white beauty that rolled off the assembly line in 1953. After finding it nearly impossible to squeeze his 6-foot-4-inch, 220-pound frame inside the diminutive sports car, he donated it to fellow western actor Ward Bond. It’s in the museum today.

ELVIS’S white 1973 Cadillac El Dorado Coupe was a 38th-birthday pres­ent from his father. The singer drove it a few months, then gave it to his karate instructor. James Dean’s 1949 Mercury was used in the classic celluloid homage to adolescent rebellion "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955). The ’49 Merc, which sat lower to the ground and was wider and longer than other Mercury models, became the epitome of teen hipness in the 1950s. Ironically, it was originally designed to be a perfect family or business car.

Then there is Jack Benny’s illustrious 1923 Maxwell, which seemed to run forever. In the real world the Maxwell company was bought out in 1925 by Walter Chrysler, who immediately replaced it with a 4-cylinder Chrysler model and incorporated it into the Plymouth line in 1928.

Not that it mattered. For two decades on his national radio show and his live casino stage shows in Reno, the deadpan Benny repeatedly implored his valet Rochester to fetch the Maxwell. The car’s name became a household word. Perhaps only Benny, who cultivated an onstage persona as a penny pincher, could realistically play a character who refused to part with an obsolete, decades-old car.

Oddities abound at the museum as well, and not all are from the auto industry’s infant days. There is an $85,000, 24-karat gold-plated DeLorean from the 1980s, the model used as the backbone for the time travel machine in the "Back to the Future" movies; and a sleek, black 1938 Phantom Corsair, built by an heir to the Heinz condiment fortune and rumored to be the inspiration for the Batmobile. Buckminster Fuller’s futuristic 1933 Dymaxion resembles a zeppelin on wheels and is believed to be the only one of the three built still in existence.

THE Dymaxion has three wheels, and Fuller claimed that it would consume half the gas of a conventional car driven at 50 miles per hour. But it was cumbersome, and after a fatal accident in Chicago, the Dymaxion’s future also died, even though an investigation exonerated the car‘s design.

The biggest car in the collection is the 28 1/2-foot-long Flying Caduceus, a doctor’s creation from 1960. And five points if you can figure out the reason behind the car’s name. The answer is at the end of the article.

However, the car on view whose design possibly exhibited the most foresight is neither sleek or streamlined. The Model T Kampkar, built in 1921 and sold with a price tag of $1,125, has a side that folded outward and came with accessories such as sleeping room for four, a folding table, a two-burner stove, an 8-gallon water supply and a complete set of cooking utensils packed on a small frame. It was, in effect, the world’s first recreational vehicle even though it resembled a hearse more than a camper. The Kampkar’s true fault may not have been its design, but its timing, introduced a few decades too early.

Whether Harrah’s cars would be seen by the public in the 21st century was in doubt after the gaming magnate died in 1978. He had first opened his collection to the public in 1962. But at the time of his death, roughly 1,400 of Harrah’s antique cars were stored in three warehouses in nearby Sparks, Nev. Harrah’s will offered no instructions pertaining to the future of his cars.

Holiday Corp., owners of the Holiday Inn hotel chain, purchased Harrah’s in 1980 and donated 175 of the cars to a newly formed 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization comprised of Nevada car enthusiasts. The organization then opened the current National Automobile Museum on Nov. 5, 1989, within a toss of the dice of downtown Reno. The museum’s exterior walls are colored "heather fire mist," a popular 1950s car paint color, and garnished with chrome trim, reflecting one of the sharpest trends ever in automobile styling. Today the museum collection boasts more than 200 motorized vehicles.

Oh, and the Flying Caduceus? Remember the car’s inventor was a doctor. A caduceus is a winged staff with two snakes entwined around it, the symbol of the medical profession. The Flying Caduceus on view in Reno was the only one made. It was designed specifically to break a land speed rec­ord but failed after several tries.

Apparently the good doctor couldn’t heal his car‘s problems.