Meet The Real Estate Baron Who Owns James Bond's Soviet Tank - And The Batmobile

When I show up at the Dezer Collection Museum and Pavilion in North Miami, I am greeted by an adolescent-looking security guard in a black golf shirt and sneakers. He tells me to wait in the lobby while he looks for his boss. Minutes later, that boss--real estate tycoon Michael Dezer--shows up, but not in the expected manner. He is riding in a motorized scooter chair, the kind that elderly folks use after having an operation. Dezer is not infirm; he just enjoys the ride.

Dezer, 72, is wearing cargo shorts, Crocs and a spread-collar, short-sleeve shirt topped by a mess of gold chains. His face is deeply tanned and he sports a healthy girth. He looks up at me from his seat below like an impish inquisitor. "Who are you?" he demands. Apparently he was expecting someone else. 

But he warms up quickly, and soon we're on a tour of his 250,000-square-foot museum. (I'm walking; he's on his scooter.) We glide by his collection of vintage Chryslers and Mustangs ("Look at those fins!" he says) and every possible type of microcar--Citroens, Fiats, Dafs and Sabras. The museum has an indoor drive-in movie theater. The Cars of Hollywood wing boasts the 1948 Ford from Grease, the 1959 Cadillac "Ecto-1" from Ghostbusters, the 1981 DeLorean from Back to the Future and, of course, a Batmobile. The James Bond section includes the shot-up Land Rover from Skyfall, a T-55 Soviet tank from Goldeneye and six Aston Martins.

All told, Dezer has more than 1,000 vehicles worth an estimated $30 million (he declines to specify the exact value). The museum--thus far, anyway--is not making money. But Dezer doesn't seem to mind much. He sums up his collecting philosophy neatly: "If I see something I like, I buy it."

His collection, I would learn later, comprises more than just what he displays in the museum. Dezer also has Rolls-Royces, Lamborghinis, a Bugatti Veyron, "a couple of yachts," a G4 and, perhaps most endearingly, multitudes of vintage bicycles and Vespas. He certainly has the resources to thoroughly scratch his collecting itch. Born and raised in a working-class family in Tel Aviv, Dezer immigrated to the U.S. in 1962, fresh out of service in the Israeli Air Force. He founded Dezer Properties, a New York City-based real estate firm that is credited with helping Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood make the transformation from manufacturing district to art hub. Dezer is also the landlord of the luxury auto retailer Manhattan Motorcars.

Condos are where he made his real hay, though. Dezer presciently started buying up oceanfront property in Miami Beach in the mid-1980s. Since then, he's developed a host of complexes there for his friend, Donald Trump, including the $900 million Trump Towers, the $600 million Trump Grande Ocean Resort and Residences and the $166 million Trump International. Dezer still owns the development rights to more than 30 oceanfront acres in Sunny Isles Beach, where he plans to open his much-hyped Porsche Design Tower in 2016, in which residents in the 132-unit tower will use car elevators to get to and from their apartments.

But back to his collection. Later on, Dezer takes me to a converted warehouse in Miami. We check out some of his Packards and Aston Martins. Then we slow down as he shows me the rows upon rows of vintage bikes, both motorized and not, mostly from the 1920s and '30s. He has all of the classic brands--Whizzer, Schwinn, Raleigh, Durkopp, Steppke and Roadmaster. Some of the motorized versions had little 50cc engines and, in their primes, barely reached speeds of 30 mph.

Then we move on to perhaps his most enduring passion: his collection of 70 Vespas, which he claims is the largest in the world, arrayed in Kelly greens, vivid blues and mustard yellows. "Vespa has been my love from the time I was 16," he says. His father bought him one in 1957 for $300, his first vehicle of any kind. He once rode a '59 model on a two-month camping trek across Europe.

Later in New York, he would sneak out of the office for two-hour lunch breaks to scoot around Central Park. And now, when he's not on his motorized scooter, Dezer rides a 2008 model around Miami. "People look at me and say, 'Isn't that the guy who has the Rolls-Royces and Lamborghinis? And now he's on a Vespa?' " he says. "But I love it. It's much better--consider the fresh air!--and especially in Florida because you don't need a helmet."

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