LOST VEGAS: The Imperial Palace Auto Collection

In 1971, Ralph Engelstad bought the rundown Flamingo Capri motel and slowly began transforming it into the Imperial Palace (IP) — a high-rise casino with an Asian theme, a classic car museum, and a Hitler problem. (More on that last little detail later, promise.)

Engelstad, who built the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, was so car-obsessed, he had a personal collection numbering about 200 classic vehicles and made the fifth floor of the IP’s parking garage into a permanent 125K square-foot exhibition hall for them.

“The Imperial Palace Auto Collection,” which was free to the public, included cars owned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, gangster Al Capone, director Cecil B. DeMille and Gen. Douglas McArthur.

When it opened on December 1, 1981, it was valued at $10 million ($38 million today).)

Führer Furor

We told you we’d get to this. Among the cars on display was a 1939 Mercedes-Benz 770K once used as a parade car by Engelstad’s favorite mass murderer.

But Engelstad’s Hitler obsession went far beyond collecting cars and WWII memorabilia.

According to a New York Times investigation, the dude threw Hitler birthday bashes in 1986 and 1988 in a 3,000-square-foot “war room” hidden inside the IP.  During these parties, bartenders wore T-shirts reading “Adolf Hitler European Tour 1939-45.”

When word escaped in 1989, Engelstad was forced to pay $1.5 million to the Nevada Gaming Control Board — then its second-highest fine ever — for “damaging Nevada’s image by glorifying Hitler and the Third Reich.”

But you came here for the cars and we digressed…

From Museum to Marketplace

By 2000, Engelstad was battling terminal lung cancer and announced he was liquidating most of his assets and retiring to a home he owned in the Cayman Islands.

He kept the IP but decided to sell its cars. So he handed the task to auto collectors Richie Clyne and Don Williams. But they came up with what they thought was a better idea — turning the museum into a showroom where everything on display was for sale.

Thus was born the slightly renamed “Auto Collections at Imperial Palace,” an inferior rotating cast of classics where your favorite car from last Vegas visit might’ve been sold to a dentist in Duluth.

The Final Lap

Engelstad died in 2002, and the IP was sold to the company that became Caesars Entertainment a year later. In 2014, the property was renamed and remodeled as the Quad, then the Linq.

The Auto Collections continued to chug along, losing a little more momentum every year, until only about 65 cars remained and Caesars terminated their lease.

Online auctions and classic car websites didn’t help foot traffic any. And, at least according to former assistant curator John Workman, the operators may have perpetuated a financial scam against the Engelstad family and the consignors. (That allegation, made recently during an interview with thevegastourist.com, remains unproven.)

All the remaining cars were either sold or returned to their owners by closing day on December 30, 2017.

“Lost Vegas” is an occasional Casino.org series spotlighting Las Vegas’ forgotten history. Click here to read other entries in the series. Think you know a good Vegas story lost to history? Email corey@casino.org.