Few museums in Los Angeles reflect the city’s identity as vividly as the Petersen Automotive Museum. Located on the iconic Wilshire Boulevard—right next to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the city’s most important fine arts institution—the building does far more than present the history of automobiles. It also tells the story of how the car became a design object, a status symbol, and an essential element of Hollywood’s film culture.
Founded in 1994, the museum is at once a technological time journey, a visual experience, and a pop-culture archive, where classic models, cinematic icons, and futuristic concepts merge into a single narrative. To our greatest surprise, among the carefully curated exhibition pieces we also found the work of a Hungarian designer.
Housed in an impressive building, the museum presents the American history of automobiles and motorcycles across three levels. Starting from the third floor, visitors can trace everything from the early days of American motoring through iconic movie cars to the latest technological developments.
Being in Hollywood, it is impossible to overlook legendary vehicles such as the DeLorean DMC-12—better known as the “Time Machine”—from the Back to the Future films; the Batmobile made famous by Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman; or the Aston Martin DB5, James Bond’s classic car from Goldfinger and other 007 films. Fans of early-1990s television will also recognize KITT from Knight Rider, an intelligent, talking black sports car that was far ahead of its time. The Dodge Charger—an iconic muscle car from the Fast & Furious series—symbolizes modern automotive action films, while younger visitors are not left out either: among the dream cars, Lightning McQueen from Cars is also parked on display.
The museum is, in fact, extremely child-friendly. A large interactive play area awaits younger visitors, featuring car-design tables, special LEGO installations, real engines that can be examined up close, and even a period-accurate Ford Model T that the whole family can sit in.
For the Los Angeles audience, the future is no longer truly the future. Autonomous taxis—once considered utopian and displayed as futuristic concepts—have become an everyday sight on the city’s streets, thanks to Waymo. We tested them ourselves not only in real life a few weeks ago, but also here at the museum, using a 3D simulator to experience and test the taxi’s radar systems.
Although we did not see full-scale models of the Hungarian designer’s creations, we still felt a sense of pride when we came across scale models of the futuristic cars designed by Géza A. Loczi in 1965. In the final exhibition room—where visual artists were given free rein to reinterpret the automotive experience—we encountered another work evoking Hungary: a giant Rubik’s Cube constructed from Matchbox cars, a playful reminder of Hungarian creativity. In the same space, visitors could also create interactive images, such as posing inside an oversized Matchbox box or becoming part of a reimagined Van Gogh painting.
While the museum does not forget two-wheeled vehicles—featuring several iconic Harley-Davidsons and a few truly unique motorcycles—it ultimately focuses on four- and three-wheeled passenger cars, offering an entertaining, colorful, and richly layered overview of American automotive history.
