It’s a Wonderful Life—at the National Auto Museum in Reno

Nothing says Christmas like the Frank Capra classic It’s a Wonderful Life. Jimmy Stewart is at his everyman-best playing George Bailey, bailing out the struggling Building and Loan and suffering endless frustration because of it in the fictitious small town of Bedford Falls.

When people think of the movie, they’re more likely to think of the characters in it than the few cars those characters drove. But they did drive some interesting cars, from George’s 1917 Dodge sedan to Sam Wainright’s Duesenberg.

The National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada, has managed to link the Christmas classic to some of the cars in its extensive collection and turn its museum into a Reno-based version of Bedford Falls, if only for a few weeks.

“It is true, we decorated the streets to look like Bedford Falls,” museum president and executive director Phil MacDougall told Autoweek.

Among the museum’s street scenes is a movie marquee, which now reads, “It’s A Wonderful Life.” From there, the connections with the movie are somewhat tenuously made.

While the museum doesn’t have the exact models that appeared in the film, they do have some that come mighty close. George, ever the underpaid and long-suffering banker, drives a 1917 Dodge in IAWL, a car that’s old even in the timeframe of the movie (1946). The museum has a 1915 Dodge, which is close enough to that.

Sam Wainwright, George’s very successful friend (“Hee haw!”) is driven to his hometown in a chauffeured 1931 Duesenberg Model J. The National Automobile Museum has a ‘34 Duesenberg. Again, close enough. And even Ernie the taxi driver’s GMC hack is almost matched with the museum’s period-correct DeSoto, complete with meter.

“So, you have the period marquee,” MacDougall told local TV station KOLO. “The cars that are very similar to that period of time. And then just tack on a little Christmas spirit and it is perfect.”

You only have to stretch your imagination a little to think you’re back in Bedford Falls and Mr. Potter is trying to destroy you, but it works.

It’s all part of the museum’s regular strategy to keep things fresh on the exhibit floor and keep visitors coming in.

“We want to appeal to a much broader audience but be really flexible and change things as often as possible,” MacDougall said. “Nobody wants to come see the same cars in the same place time and time again. And we’re committed to making it a very new experience.”

In that vein, the museum also has a “Cars of the Stars” exhibit, with everything from a Barbie car to a Delorean like the one from Back to the Future, to a Ferrari 308 GTS similar to what Tom Selleck drove in Magnum PI. There’s even a 1974 Dodge Monaco with “cop shocks” as Dan Akroyd said in The Blues Brothers.

The National Automobile Museum is located at 1 Museum Drive in Reno, open seven days a week. Autoweek was once headquartered in Reno, and longtime (now retired) columnist Cory Farley still lives there somewhere. The museum itself was salvaged from the enormous collection of William Fisk Harrah, of Harrah’s casino.

When Harrah passed away with no will, there was a mess sorting things out. Much of his collection was sold, but some of it was kept and became the NAM. If you visit, tell them Autoweek sent you.

Now Merry Christmas ya’ old Building and Loan!