As I awkwardly jogged around the darkened basement of The Petersen Automotive Museum, arms outstretched, gripping a very homemade LED strip apparatus, battery pack slung across my chest, doing laps around priceless metal in 25-second shutter intervals, while a handful of technicians and museum personnel looked on, I…
This weekend, the Petersen Automotive Museum—reopens December 1st!—turned Japanese with an all-Nippon cruise-in. It was an event long overdue, and certainly welcomed. They put the word out to Facebook, Twitter, smoke signals, mirrors off the moon, etc. And then, over 500 cars showed up.
Bruce Meyer drove his Le Mans-winning Porsche 935 to Luftgekuhlt this weekend.
There's probably no better visual metaphor for the class structure than the traditional Town Car. Driver exposed to the elements up front for all to see, the wealthy owner carefully installed in a cushioned jewel box in back. The Petersen has a great Town Car exhibit now, and, even better, they let me use one for an…
Last night was the Petersen Museum's big Gala, and thanks to some lax security work, I was able to get in there and intermingle with my betters, at least for a little while. I did manage to corner actor and 24 Hours Of Le Mans racer Patrick Dempsey and ask him some questions before being ejected from the event and…
Crawling around behind-the-curtains at The Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, one of the first cars I noticed was a bright yellow De Tomaso Pantera. But this wasn't any Italo-American exotic. It was Elvis Presley's Pantera and it has the bullet holes from The King's revolver to prove it. Here's how they got…
Today, the Petersen Automotive Museum Foundation was given the gift of… the Petersen Automotive Museum. The 300,000-sf LA building and its cars/exhibits were officially transferred from Margie Petersen/Petersen Foundation to the museum. Estimated value: $100,000,000.
Tedoro Nguema Obiang Mangue's the son of Equatorial Guinea's dictator and has been using the country's oil wealth to live it up in Malibu, including keeping his Rolls Royces and Bugatti Veyrons at L.A.'s Petersen Museum.
You know it's a true Cadillac when it makes you hear Patsy Cline and dream about long, oak-lined boulevards. Housed at the wonderful Petersen Musem. [Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk]
As we first reported, the $1.5 million Bugatti Veyron used on the Tonight Show was actually loaned to Conan O'Brien for free. According to the museum, it's now so famous they may move it to their Hollywood wing.
Our theory about where Conan O'Brien got the Bugatti for his crazy expensive sketch was correct. We now have confirmation from the Petersen Automotive Museum that they did loan the car to the Tonight Show for last night's sketch.
NBC pulled Conan O'Brien's devious Bugatti Veyron Mouse sketch from last night's "full episode" replay of the Tonight Show on NBC.com and Hulu — apparently unwilling to pay royalties for Conan's "crazy expensive" car-starring sketch. Video evidence below.
Bugatti only built and delivered a couple hundred $1.5 million-and-up Veyrons and there's only a handful in California. So when Conan O'Brien trotted out the Bugatti Veyron Mouse on last night's Tonight Show, we wondered: where'd he get it? UPDATED!
The Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles is hosting a selection of the city denizen's automotive creations that defy the soulless mechanicals of modern commuter boxes by proudly representing the culture and families that crafted the machines. While one group of post WW2 hooligan Angelenos were seeking higher…
After a short battle with cancer Robert E. Petersen has passed away. If not for Petersen and his crazy idea for a magazine full of gow jobs called Hot Rod we wouldn't have beans for jobs.
It looks like a harmless 1966 GMC Handivan hiding a whiskey still, but it's really a 40-year-old antecedent to modern fuel-cell vehicles. It's the GM Electrovan, one of the first experiments in using hydrogen to propel a car — a swashbuckling exercise marked by exploding storage tanks, leaking electrolytes producing…
It began with the first neanderthal who lit his mammoth-bone pipe over a methane vent in LaBrea and rocketed himself into Laguna Hills: Human propulson. After that, man developed more advanced forms of transport propelled by steam, electricity, coal, wombat feces, petroleum, turbines, french-fry oil and hydrogen — and…
Commenter Danny Boy, who'll come back when summer's in the meadow, went and checked out the Steve McQueen exhibit going on at the Pete until April 9th and now we've got Sheryl Crow stuck in our heads again. Gah! Featured are McQueen's legendary XKSS, his Fuelie '57 Chevy convertible, his Porsche from Le Mans…
Opening tomorrow at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Fabulous Los Angeles, California is a redux of an exhibit they ran a few years back featuring significant cars of rock 'n' roll, including the Pantera Elvis shot full o' holes, a Nancy Sinatra movie Mustang and Snoop's golf cart from his Chrysler spot with Lido…
