A visit to the Petersen auto museum in Los Angeles (pics)

Had posted to the General forum but I think was wrong place.

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Hey guys,

So I am is LA for the week on business.
Last week-end I went to San Diego to visit the USS Midway (see thread in Off topic)
Today, I left work early to check out the nearby Peterson Auto Museum.

Here are some pictures and comments of my visit.

Fred Astair's old ride



1999 Indy Car



Batmobile used in the movies with Michael Keaton



Used in the first Hangover movie



Used in Thelma & Louise



Interesting chart on drag coefficient in the "aerodynamic" section



Sweet Veyron



I was REALLY happy to see this car. If you have not seen it, I highly recommend the documentary "who killed the electric car". You can actually see this EV1 at one point in the documentary.



The documentary is available here:
You can see this car and museum @ 1:19:27.


Filming of Speed Channel's "Car Crazy". The guy on the left is the same guy you can see in the documentary above at 1:19:27. (The museum curator)



De Lorean. I wonder if it comes from Dubai or some Arab sheik!



Used in the movie Gangster Squad.



Thats it! I took +-90 minutes to visit at a medium pace. If you are in Los Angeles around the Wilshire/Miracle Mile area, definitely worth the visit. Entry is a very reasonable 12$

TripAdvisor review:

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attracti...Automotive_Museum-Los_Angeles_California.html

Nice! Thx 4 sharing; will hit this place up if ever i'm in LA...

Mastermis said:

De Lorean. I wonder if it comes from Dubai or some Arab sheik!

Click to expand...

Gold Plated

For Christmas 1981, A DeLorean/American Express promotion planned to sell one hundred 24k-Karat Gold Plated DMC-12s for $85,000 each to its gold card members, but only two were sold. One of these was purchased by Roger Mize, president of Snyder National Bank in Snyder, Texas. VIN #4301 sat in the bank lobby for over 20 years before being loaned to the Petersen Automotive Museum of Los Angeles. It has a black interior, and an automatic transmission.[42]
The second gold-plated American Express DMC-12 was purchased by Sherwood Marshall, an entrepreneur and former Royal Canadian Naval Officer. Mr. Marshall donated his DeLorean to the William F. Harrah Foundation/National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada. This car, VIN #4300, is the only one of the three existing gold-plated examples to be equipped with a manual transmission. This car has a tan interior. Like its golden siblings, it is a low-mileage vehicle with only 1,442 miles (2,307 km) on the odometer.[43]
A third gold-plated car exists with 636 miles (1,018 km) on the odometer; it carries the VIN plate for the last DeLorean, #20105, though final assembly was actually completed in Columbus, Ohio in 1983.[44] This car was assembled with spare parts that were required by American Express in case one of the other two that were built were damaged. All necessary gold-plated parts were on hand, with the exception of one door. The car was assembled after another door was gold-plated, though the added door does not precisely match the rest of the car in color and grain. The car was first acquired by the winner of a Big Lots store raffle. Consolidated International, which owned the department store, had purchased 1,374 DMC-12s during the DeLorean Company's financial troubles, acquiring the remaining stock after the company went into receivership. Now held by a private owner in La Vale, Maryland, the third and last gold-plated DeLorean is currently for sale at the price of $250,000.[when?] This car and the example in Reno have saddle-brown leather interiors, a color scheme which was intended to become an option on later production cars. However, these two cars were the only DeLoreans to be thus equipped from factory parts.

Good find. Thanks!