RonnieAdventures: RonnieAdventure #0343 - Petersen Automotive Museum, Las Angeles, California

You are right! It does not look like a museum, but the Petersen Automotive Museum is one of the largest automotive museums in the world. The museum was founded in 1994 by magazine publisher Robert E. Petersen and is owned and operated by the Petersen Automotive Museum Foundation.

In 2015 the museum underwent an extensive $125 million renovations, including the building's facade that consists of 308 sections of 14-gauge steel weighing 100 tons, 25 supports, and fastened together with 140,000 custom made stainless-steel screws. No wonder the building looked different than the last time I toured the facility.

The museum currently has over 100 vehicles on display in 25 galleries and over 250 additional vehicles stored in a vault in the basement level of the building. Limited guided tours of the vault are available for an additional fee. Unfortunately, the tour times did match my available times, so I just toured the 25 galleries.

Since I last toured the museum everything was completely different, with more interactive teaching exhibits and a wider variety of vehicles rotated through the displays. Through January 2019 there is an extensive Porsche exhibit on the first floor of the building and on the second floor there is a history of the Japanese automotive industry with many vehicles on loan from Japanese collections.

The first practical self-propelled vehicle built in the world is generally considered to be Karl Benz's Patent Motorwagen that was built in 1886 with a four-stroke water-cooled engine that also had an electric ignition. On display is one of the twenty-five replicas built by John Bentley

The oldest surviving gasoline-powered vehicle built in Los Angeles is an 1900 Smith Runabout. The vehicle has a two-cylinder, air-cooled engine with a belt and pulley drive system.

In 1908 Henry Ford produced the Ford Model T that sold over 15 million vehicles in its 20 years of production. (Vehicle on display is a 1910 Model T Roadster.) The first Model T's were priced at $825; however, due to efficiencies made possible by the moving assembly line, by 1924 the price of a Model T had dropped to $260.

Photographer Unknown

Hollywood has always had a love for automobiles and many are on display in the museum. Although the 1967 Toyota 2000GT was not manufactured as a roadster, on display was one of two vehicles that were transformed into roadsters for the 1967 James Bond movie You only Live Twice.

George Barris restyled a 1965 Ford Mustang for Nancy Sinatra to drive in the movie Marriage on the Rocks. The roof and exterior side panels are covered with faux Zebra fur.

On display was the 2001 Honda S2000 from the movie 2 Fast 2 Furious. The car survived the scene in which it jumped a bridge, with only minor aesthetic damage.

A total of 24 Plymouth Furys were acquired for the production of Christine, a movie based on a book by Stephen King. Only two cars survived the movie filming and this vehicle was supposed to have been crushed after the movie debuted, but was saved by Martin Sanchez. .

Gypsy Rose, a 1964 Chevrolet Impala, was considered to be one of the most iconic lowriders ever built. The original Gypsy Rose was totaled in an accident, but it was recreated and received national attention in 1974 when it was used in the TV series "Chico and the Man."

Although a number of "Herbies" were built for the 2005 movie Herbie: Fully Loaded, this is the 1963 Volkswagen that was actually driven by Lindsay Lohan.

Three DeLorean Time Machines were built for the movie Back to the Future, and on display is the "A" Car that was the most detailed and received the most screen time. After appearing in all three films the vehicle was on display for 25 years at Universal Studios Hollywood and then moved to the Petersen Museum.

The 1932 Ford Flathead Roadster that appeared in Iron Man I and Iron Man II was used by Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) to explain the "hot rod red" color of Iron Man's infamous gold and red suit.

Photographer Unknown

On display was one of the six Batpods built for the movies The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Also on display is one of the five promotional Batmobiles built based on the movies Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992). The Batmobile was built on the platform of a 1967 Chevrolet Impala, powered by a 327-cubic-inch V-8 engine,. Rolls-Royce jet engine components were used for the hood air intake and the turbine blades in the nosepiece were from a British Harrier fighter jet.

The 1400 Vignale Cabriolet was built on a 1951 Fiat Chassis and was so popular it appeared on the cover of the February 1953 issue of Motor Trend magazine. In 1955 the car driven by Kirk Douglas in The Racers movie.

The Orbitron was constructed by "Big Daddy" Ed Roth in 1964 and was based on a slingshot dragster developed by Mickey Thompson. The vehicle used separate red, green, and blue (RGB) headlights that were intended to produce a single white beam of light when mixed. It was always thought that the Orbitron was destroyed, but in 2007 the vehicle was discovered outside of an adult bookstore in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico ,and was being used as a dumpster. The vehicle was restored by Galpin Motors.

Von Dutch (born Kenny Howard) was a talented mechanic and machinist. In 1970 Dutch created his Kenford Truck by mounting a 1947 Kenwordh cab on a 1956 Ford chassis. This was his personal vehicle that he drove for a number of years. The truck was featured in the first issue of Juztapoz magazine.

Kenny Scharf's New Improved Ultima Suptema Deluxa was built using a 1959 Cadillac Sedan de Ville and features space-age cultural symbols along with anthropomorphic creatures. A sign by the vehicles states that located in the trunk "is an otherworldly installation of found objects. The name is a nod to the hyperbolic language of the advertising age in keeping with the mid-century sensibility of the car. Underglow lighting completes the illusion that the vehicle is headed into a post-nuclear, retro-future timeline."

Back to the Past! Anderson Electric Car Company manufactured electric vehicles from 1906 until 1939, longer than any other electric car company in the world. The 1915 Detroit Electric Model 61 Brougham on display was one of about 3,000 units built.

The 1914 Canadian Galt Gas-Electric Hybrid had a gasoline engine that ran a generator to supply power for an electric motor to propelled the car. Extra power produced by the generator was stored in batteries beneath the floorboard and then used to provide extra power at peak times.

The 1987 Mana LA Solar-Wind Hybrid was powered by electricity generated from photovoltaic cells covering an arched structure that was designed as a rigid sail. The vehicle could reach speeds of up to 85 miles-per-hour. In 1987 the vehicle competed in the World Solar Challenge, a 1,980-mile race from Darwin to Adelaide, Australia.

However, my favorite electric vehicle was the 2018 Volkswagen I.D. R Pikes Peak Battery Electric Vehicle that finished the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in 7:57.148 minutes, setting a new record for the fasted time ever.

Photographer Unknown

There were also a number of other race cars on display that were driven by famous drivers and set numerous records..

The history of the Japanese automotive industry display contained many vehicles, including the 1967 Honda N600 that was the very first Honda car imported to the US.

The first Toyota Toyopets were imported into the United States in 1958, but most Americans found them to be too small and too slow; so Toyota pulled out of the US market and did not return until 1965. In 1957 a Toyota Toyopet was the first Japanese vehicle to participate in the Round Australia Trial.

In 1967 Toyota shipped forty-one Sports 800s to the United States for marketing purposes, but dealers concluded that the Sports 800 was not well received; so, Toyota dropped their plans to import the vehicles. The vehicle on display is one of the 41 vehicles left in the United States after the marketing period.

The Porsche display contained a wide variety of vehicles, including one of the first production 1949 Porsche 356-2 "Gmund" Coupes. The vehicle on display was the 50th "Gmund" built and possible the last Porsche built in Austria. In the 1950s, the hot thing to do was to put a Porsche engine in a VW Bug and blow the doors off all of the people that thought they had a fast car.

In 1955 Porsche built the 550/1500 RS Spyder for racing. The vehicle displayed finished second in point in its SCCA class for the 1956 season. However, many people remember the Porsche 550 Spyder as the vehicle that Hollywood Actor James Dean was driving when he was killed in an automotive accident September 30, 1955.