A morning at the Reno museum

Before sealed beams and tungsten filaments, you carried fire on the front of your car. Acetylene gas, made by dripping water onto calcium carbide in a tank under the running board, burned bright enough to read by, and the lamps that held it were jewellery. Polished nickel, fluted glass, brass collars. Half a dozen of them survive in the museum, each one a small lighthouse.

In February 1908 six cars left Times Square bound for Paris, westwards. The route went across America in winter, by ship to Japan, through Siberia in the thaw, and across Europe to the finish. The Thomas Flyer arrived first. The crew slept three to a seat, repaired the chassis with railway tools, and carved their initials into the dash to keep awake. The car has not been restored. You can still read the names.

Mercer of Trenton built America's first true sports car. Bugatti of Molsheim treated an engine bay as a place for jewellery. Brooks, Mercury and Monroe each took a turn at putting a single chromed word on the front of a car and meaning it. Cole of Indianapolis put a V8 into production six years before Cadillac. Alvis of Coventry, Jaguar of Browns Lane. Plymouth of Detroit, written twice. Land Rover of Solihull, painted Bronze Green. Rolls-Royce of Crewe, with a temple for a grille. Edsel, the most expensive failure of 1958. Cadillac Eldorado, the cheapest victory of 1957. Porsche, written in fine chromed letters along the fender of a black coupé. Sixteen badges, photographed close enough to read.

The museum's signature trick is its scenery. Four full city streets, a 1900s town, a 1910s boulevard, a 1930s drive-in strip and a 1950s suburb, have been built up around the cars, complete with shopfronts, palm trees, gas pumps and street furniture pulled from estate sales up and down the West. The Flying A globe glows red against the Reno light. The Cab Stand sign stands on a curb that no longer exists. You can read a city in painted enamel.

Reno keeps four Hollywood cars in one hall. George Barris built the candy-apple-red 1948 Ford De Luxe from Grease. Walt Disney built a white 1963 VW Beetle with a number 53 on the door for The Love Bug. Ivan Reitman bought a $4,800 1959 Cadillac Miller-Meteor ambulance, called it ECTO-1, and used it to bust ghosts in 1984. And Pixar built a full-scale, drivable Tow Mater for Cars in 2006, the only one of the four with eyes.

Mercedes-Benz built 1,400 of the 300 SL Gullwing between 1954 and 1957, an aluminium body over a tubular space-frame, doors hinged at the roof because the frame went straight through where a door sill would. Reno's example sits with its left door up and a four-piece set of fitted Hartmann luggage on the parcel shelf. It has been packed for the same trip since 1989.

Preston Tucker proposed a rear-engined sedan with a centre headlamp that steered with the front wheels, a padded dash, and a windshield designed to pop out in a crash. He built fifty-one before the SEC and a hostile press ended the company in 1949. The car at Reno is one of forty-seven that survived. The centre lamp still steers.

Léon Bollée built his first car in 1895; the badge here is in copper, in his own handwriting. Forty years later, Delahaye's Type 135 went around the world wearing coachwork by Saoutchik, Figoni & Falaschi and Chapron, bodies that treated steel like a couture fabric. Reno keeps both ends of the French story in the same room, each photographed close enough to mistake for sculpture.

The last walk through the hall, looking down. A wooden steering wheel from the 1907 Thomas Flyer. A sky-blue cockpit with a Cadillac wreath at the centre. A Packard Safari wire wheel. And a small set of lamps that, photographed close, stop being lamps and start being objects, a yellow Ford teardrop, brass-era spokes, a cut-glass marker.