A Trove of Cars Fit for the Racetrack, a Beauty Pageant, or a Date with 007

The Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles combines art, technology, history, and the lure of the road.

L ike we count our real friends on one hand, I have a very limited number of museums that are truly special, especially good at a focused mission, committed to the best-of-its-kind art in a handsome, welcoming setting. But I’ve added two new favorites over the last couple of months, places where I’ve had a good time. The one I’ll write about today is the fantastic Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. I visited it for the first time in late April, and odysseys are in the news. Let’s skip Ithaca, unless we’re hankering for the Finger Lakes. The Petersen shows us how to hit the road in style.

Cars are as much art — heavy on design — as they are mechanical, but I’m not a car nut so the Petersen, founded in 1994, had lots of educating to do. It’s got to be the best museum on the history of the car, more or less divided among mechanics, design, and lore. It’s across Wilshire Boulevard from both the new Los Angeles County Museum of Art opus and the LaBrea Tar Pits, near the Screen Actors Guild headquarters and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Or, I should say, it’s at the center of L.A. culture, high, middling, and Jurassic.

The building, opening in 2015, looks like a wind tunnel slipstream. With a red-and-gray metal façade, it widens the eyes and takes our breath away at the speed of a Bugatti EB 110. A trove of cars and car heritage is on view, with an emphasis on scholarly selectivity. And shame on me — I’d never been. In its commodious, infinitely flexible galleries are movie stars like the Batmobile, Herbie’s Volkswagen Beetle, the Model T, and a 1934 Chrysler Airflow, a staple for Astaire and Rogers when they weren’t tripping the light fantastic or on an ocean liner. There’s a Popemobile, too. And Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder from the Star Wars franchise.

The Petersen is the brainchild of publishing tycoon Robert Petersen (1926–2007), founder of Hot Rod and Motor Trend, and his wife, Margie (1935–2011). She was Miss Rheingold 1957, a spokeswoman for Coke and Ivory Soap, and founder of Teen. It’s the soul child, of course, of Los Angeles itself. The automobile defines Los Angeles, more than the movies do, and the freedom of the open road is part of what makes us American.

The Petersens paid for most of the building’s costs, provided an endowment to keep it running, and gave the core collection. Their two sons were killed in a plane crash in 1975, so the cars became their babies.

About 350 cars, classics and the classics of tomorrow, nearly all on view, range from a replica of the 1886 Benz Patent-Motorwagen to cars from the 2020s, among them a Waymo. The Benz is the first gas-powered car, capable of 10 miles an hour with .75 horsepower, or the pulling power of a draft horse on a so-so day. The Waymo? It’s a 2022 Zeekr prototype and self-driving. The permanent-collection presentation and interpretation are brilliant. We learn about extravagant car design on the first floor, a razzle-dazzle space, cleansing our everyday sensory palette and our imaginations, too. The second floor looks at engineering, technology, and manufacture and has space for exhibitions. The third floor starts with Why We Love the Automobile and dives into design, concept cars, and cars from movies and TV.

Then there’s the Vault, not any old vault but a vast basement space, basic as a parking garage so as not to distract from close to 300 cars, displayed more or less chronologically, each a treasure and each a design peak. It’s the Petersen’s pièce de résistance and the Louvre of cars. I’ll write about the vault on Saturday. Why shoot all the fireworks at once?

There’s a rousing juxtaposition in the first gallery: a side-by-side display of a Duryea Phaeton, made around 1900, and a 2025 Czinger 21C Z Max. Phaeton, the wild and crazy teenage son of the Greek sun god Helios, borrowed his dad’s chariot for the day, careened all over the heavens, and so annoyed all creatures great and small that Zeus zapped him with a lightning bolt. What’s the message? Not “there’s no place like home.” Ovid put it well as he did all things: “Though greatly he failed, more greatly he dared.” Duryea’s Phaeton, made in Reading, Penn., is a motorized buggy. Queen Victoria was often photographed in a horse-drawn version.

The Czinger, made in Los Angeles outside the assembly-line process, used AI to assist in the design. It’s 3-D printed in metal with lasers and then assembled by robots. The span between the two vehicles — only 125 years — is a gulp-inducing show of how far we’ve traveled in the blink of an eye, sort of. The dream of a self-propelled vehicle might be as old as humanity, but it crawled out of our heads in 1769 with the Cugnot, a French steam-powered tractor, not on view but described on a wall panel along with a dozen other stabs at individual — not mass — motorized transit.

The car is about discovery, but mostly it’s about freedom, as the Petersen reminds those who don’t understand this in displaying its 1918 Ford Model T Coupelet. The Model T, about 15 million of which were produced from 1908 to 1924, was America’s first mass-produced, reliable, and cheap — $290 in 1924 — car and tractor since this tough guy was good in dirt. I learned that Henry Ford’s line about the car’s color — “you can get it in any color as long as it’s black” — isn’t strictly true, since early T’s came in gray, green, blue, and red. Black was the rule after 1914. The car on view is among America’s first true convertibles, too.

At the Petersen we move from big picture to little picture with ease. A gallery on the history of tires, called How We Roll, is fascinating as it shows the progression from wood protected by metal or leather bands, to vulcanized rubber, pneumatic, radial ply, puncture-resistant, and illuminated tires, to moon tires. All in hot pursuit of comfort, durability, and safety. One of the things I like the most about the Petersen is its talent for taking complexity and presenting it clearly. It’s a smooth ride through the weeds.

Weeds notwithstanding, we’re never far from a fabulous car. Steps from How We Roll is a 1933 Duesenberg SJ Convertible Coupe, the source of the word “doozy.” The Duesenberg brothers, German immigrants, first made racing bicycles, then boat and plane engines, and then powerful, reliable luxury cars. The thing oozes glamour with its sweeping lines, haughty grille, and hood that goes on for days. Curves and angles evoke speed even when it’s in repose. And confidence. And wealth.

They were made in Indianapolis, but most of the 500 or so that were made stopped at specialist coach builders to add bespoke work on color, trim, fabric, the placement of the spare tire, and the trunk-or-rumble seat. That wasn’t unusual. Many very high-end cars left the factory as a chassis and engine and went to a deluxe coach builder for customization. The Duesenberg went to L.A.’s Savile Row of coach builders but there were specialists in New York, Paris, London, Brussels, and Milan, too. It’s a VIP car, in the late 1920s and early ’30s — our version of the Rolls-Royce. “A Duesenberg owner can be passed by another car only when he wishes to be passed,” read its ads, aimed at the effete and elite, I know, but it’s still a beautiful car.

Behind the Duesenberg, in a space titled Innovation, is a 1934 black Chrysler Airflow. It’s the first car to use streamlining to promote aerodynamic efficiency. Chrysler, working with Orville Wright, built a wind tunnel to study ways to improve handling at high speeds. The engineers learned that cars made in standard styles were more aerodynamic if driven backward. Birds and planes were streamlined while cars, well, they’re shaped like a box. So they developed the Airflow’s sleeker, more tubular, and lower body, with a grille that looks like a waterfall and subtly V-shaped windshield. The engine went further forward, which let the seats move forward and allowed more room. Smoother ride, less drag, and a look consistent with the age of Art Deco.

It was a flop, but like most trendsetters, it was retired for a bit and then copied by everyone. Art Deco was in the air and water. There’s lots of it at the Petersen, and, when it comes to cars, it never bores. A 1939 Bugatti Type 57C Cabriolet is as much a work of art as a Picasso or a Matisse and, unlike the art of either, in the 1930s at least, a breathtaking beauty. The Chrysler Airflow, the Bugatti, and the Petersen’s gold 1937 Delage D8-120 Aerosport Coupe have nothing to do with buggies. The Bugatti is voluptuous, with its ogee and teardrop shapes, fully skirted fender, and horseshoe grille. A retractable windshield adds an extra dash of sleek. It’s a flirty car. It’s so horizontal and curvy that I thought of a Titian nude. Near the Airflow is a 1948 Norman Timbs Special. It’s a radically streamlined roadster and designed by an Indy 500 car builder. Not for nothing does Art Deco style figure in the path to the race car.

Reza Pahlavi, the future Shah of Iran, owned the Bugatti. Provenance is part of the Petersen’s acquisition policy, as it should be. Fred Astaire’s 1927 Rolls-Royce Phantom is there. It’s a town car, meaning it has an enclosed passenger area sumptuously outfitted with silver bud vases, a telescope, opera glasses, a vanity set, and a compartment, uncovered, for the chauffeur. Steve McQueen’s 1957 Jaguar XKSS is there as well.

Then there’s the section in the museum for cars made famous in the movies. Cars are deluxe movie props, expensive because they’re almost always specially outfitted and often, like the Thelma and Louise car, trashed. It’s in a section of the Petersen for TV and movie cars. Thelma and Louise, a huge 1991 hit, tells the story of two everyday women — hit by sexism, disrespect, and exploitation — who go on a road trip, destination uncertain except for a state of self-discovery. By 1991, their 1966 Ford Thunderbird convertible was a vintage car, retro like the traditional milieu in which they’re stuck but sporty and extroverted. Turquoise, it looks good against the Western desert landscape. It became a character. Yes, I know, our protagonists crash at the end, plummeting into the Colorado River, but there were five Thunderbirds in the mix.

British, Italian, and French high-art cars tend to be elegant, even debonaire, powerful when on the move but  poshly so. American cars are a muscular, take-no-prisoners, get-outta-my-way proposition. A 1958 Plymouth Fury is an example, and it’s my vintage, give or take. Nothing says “vrooom, vrooom” like a red car. It appeared, demonically possessed, in a movie called Christine, based on a Stephen King story.

Then there’s the Batmobile from the 1989 Tim Burton film. Batman, I learned, drove a roadster in the comics, but the thing evolved into a film noir priapic phantom, evoking a bat, Batman’s cape, and also fighter jets, ’50s Corvettes, a Chevy Impala, and a Pontiac Bonneville.

The museum displays car-care products in cases and also shows the evolution of the car seat, cup holders, car phones, hood ornaments, and roadmaps. Alas, after enjoying these and other in-depth takes on car essentials, I couldn’t find anything on the history of gas or the gas station. There’s an electric car or two on view and some huzzahs sent in the direction of these luxury goods, shows of virtue, money pits, subsidy gluttons, and explosions-in-waiting. I’d be happy to ditch these footnotes to mobility and celebrate fossil fuels, which have helped make America rich beyond imagination. Safety features should’ve gotten the same treatment as tires. It’s hard to imagine how fiercely car companies fought mandatory seat belts and airbags. Until the 1960s, “try not to hit anything” was about the only guide to car safety.

The Petersen has an impressive exhibition program and philosophy. It keeps its exhibitions up for a long time, which is good. It’s got a national cult following, and people often can’t organize themselves to get to L.A. for an exhibition that runs only three or four months. Performance and Prestige: A History of Aston Martin is on view until October 11. A 2023 Aston Martin AMR23 looks like a velociraptor, the fastest dinosaur, come back from the long dead and made from strips of shiny metal. Near it is a 1964 Aston Martin DB5, a sleek fastback in birch-colored silver, with a perforated grille, and a tall hood scoop. It’s a copy made from a scan and used as a stunt car in a 2021 Bond flick. An original — and earlier — 1961 version is in the show.

James Bond drives an Aston Martin starting in the early movies like Goldfinger and No Time to Die. It’s high-end Swinging Sixties, with British engineering and Italian style. A perfect car for a classy spy. It’s sleek and feline, muscular and aggressive, a coupe, since Bond, though mostly a loner, still liked to have a spot for the Pussies Galore of the world. No room for kids. Ian Fleming’s novel put Bond in a tamer Aston Martin, but the DB5 had more zip and was a bit more tubular, showing how the look of spaceships and missiles influenced design. With 282-horsepower, it left the 1886 Benz not only in the dust after a split second but in the next county.

The Aston Martin on view at the Petersen didn’t have the front-mounted machine gun, tire-shredding blades, or revolving license plates. Too bad. They’d come in handy, I think, in these parlous times. My father was offered a used Aston Martin DB5, a red one. One of our neighbors, an heir to a department store fortune, owned it. He’d just died, a suicide, having gassed himself in it. My father described it to my mother as “Dubonnet rosso,” hoping to persuade her that it was a had-to-have and sending me, a junior spy, to the dictionary and then to their liquor cabinet, confused. Did the neighbor die from too much Dubonnet? She vetoed what she called “the death car.” My father had to wait — he got a Mercedes-Benz GT S — until a bit after she died years later. The new, young wife soon filled that empty bucket seat, but that’s another story.