I had the opportunity for a short visit to the Peterson Museum, after my flight out of Los Angeles was canceled. I had always wanted to go to see the museum after seeing a few of the cars featured on Jay Leno’s Garage (for example Steve McQueen’s XKSS).
The museum has two parts, the public exhibits over three floors and three basements with cars not in the current collection. You can do a tour of the basement for an extra charge, although for some reason photography is prohibited. Despite that, the tour is well worth it and you’ll see a range of really interesting cars from horseless carriages, custom cars, race cars, Saddam Hussein’s W100 600 and so on. This is also how they can keep the upstairs collections fresh.
The highlight for me was the display of the pre-war French cars, Bugatti, Delahaye, Delage, Voisin etc. These are some of the most beautiful cars ever manufactured and this is an amazing collection of them under the one roof.
As the museum is near Hollywood they also feature celebrity owned cars, and cars that have been in movies or TV shows. For example, the De Tomaso Pantera that was shot by Elvis Presley is in the basement.
I only had two and a half hours there which is not really enough, but the museum is well worth it for anyone who has a few hours in the Los Angeles area.
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