Petersen Automotive Museum

How to Get There

Overview

The Petersen Automotive Museum is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile neighborhood of Los Angeles.

History

Founded on June 11, 1994, by magazine publisher Robert E. Petersen and his wife Margie, the $40-million Petersen Automotive Museum is owned and operated by the Petersen Automotive Museum Foundation. The museum was originally located within the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and later moved to a historic department store designed by Welton Becket. Opened in 1962, the building first served as a short-lived U.S. branch of Seibu Department Stores, before operating as an Ohrbach's department store from 1965 to 1986. Six years after Ohrbach's closed, Robert Petersen selected the largely windowless site as an ideal space for a museum—allowing artifacts to be displayed without harmful exposure to direct sunlight.

Collections

The museum has over 100 vehicles on display in its 25 galleries. The remaining half is kept in a vault on the building's basement level. Age restrictions and an admission premium are in effect to view the vault collection. The ground floor focuses on automotive artistry, showcasing an array of extravagant automobiles. The second floor is principally concerned with industrial engineering—including design, performance, and a collection of interactive teaching exhibits. Special displays on the industry floor cover racing, motorcycles, hot rods and customs. The third floor chronicles the history of the automobile, with an emphasis on the car culture of Southern California.

Some of the cars, automotive memorabilia, and exhibits include:

• An extensive Porsche exhibit (until January 2019), including the rare 1939 Porsche 64, one of only two in existence
• A unique exhibit on the history of the Japanese automotive industry, with many cars on view from Japanese collections
• An exhibit on powered children's racecars
• The NASCAR Herbie used during filming of Herbie: Fully Loaded and Suki's hot pink Honda S2000 from 2 Fast 2 Furious.
• Lightning McQueen from Disney Pixar Cars and Cars 2
• 1967 Ford MKIII GT40
• 1956 Jaguar XKSS formerly owned by Steve McQueen
• 2011 Ford Fiesta from Ken Block's Gymkhana 3
• 1992 Batmobile from Batman Returns
• Ferrari 308 GTS Targa used by Tom Selleck in Magnum, P.I. In order for the 6'4” Tom Selleck to fit comfortably in the Ferrari, they had to lower the driver seat.
• De Tomaso Pantera which belonged to Elvis Presley
• The DeLorean time machine from Back to the Future
• Plymouth XNR built by Gotham Garage on Car Masters: Rust to Riches

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Petersen Automotive Museum", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0