FULL TOUR OF MUSEUM VAULT | 250 RARE CARS

hi my name is Dana Williamson conservator and manager the collection here at the Petersen Automotive Museum and welcome to another of our virtual tours of our vault our vault deep beneath Museum here presented by Hagerty while the museum is closed we're doing several virtual vault tours museum tours a lot of educational programs so please look up on our website times and for a small donation there are so many things available and we'd like you to partake in whatever you would like to so without further ado let's go and take a look at the vault so now we're entering the vault area of the museum I don't know how many of you have heard of the vault but the vault is an exhibit space that is deep beneath the Petersen Automotive Museum and takes up a whole city block I would say we have probably over 250 automobiles motorcycles trucks cars down here on display and what I'm going to do is I'm going to take you on a tour a general tour just so you can see what we have down here and then when the museum does open I would love for you to come in and take a guided tour where you can hear stories of all the cars motorcycles history stories on history owners and just really interesting stories about the cars so what I'm gonna do right now is as we take this tour I'll touch on several things several particular cars that might have some stories that I think you'll find interesting so what we're gonna do is on my left here we're going to start out with these two vehicles that you see and I say vehicles because the one on the right this black one right here is actually a Studebaker that's a 1904 Studebaker of course horse-drawn carriage so this is not powered by itself you would buy this but you would need a horse the horse could pull the wagon and this is how it was up until around 1903 this is a doctor's coach as you can see you sit very high you have a whip socket and rings for for the horse harness and right next to it this maroon car here that you see is a 1903 / 4 Cadillac so we're basically starting at the beginning this is this is the beginning of the automobile for the production automobile here in America this particular Cadillac would was the first model Cadillac produced and it's not horse-drawn so this is a is powered by an internal combustion engine and I'm gonna walk around to the back here and just show you what it looked like that's a big single cylinder open valve chain driven engine so that is what powers this catalog so in 1904 you could either have a car like this say this Cadillac internal combustion engine or you could have the horse-drawn carriage but this Cadillac in 1903 would cost you 750 dollars which a lot of people didn't have at that time it's a lot of money $750 now as we walk along on our left you're gonna see a lot of brassy era cars and on a my right you're gonna see a lot of motorcycles and in our motorcycle collection this is just a sampling of it we have others in other parts of the museum I have for Husqvarna here off-road bikes two of them were Steve McQueen's this was Steve McQueen's personal bike that he would ride through the desert the one next to it is the bike that Steve rode in the movie on any Sunday the one in front of that is Bruce Brown's who was the director of any Sunday that's the one he rode and the other husky right here was also used in on any Sunday we have Vespas we have scooters we have some cuts we have a custom right here that belonged to Tim Allen Tim Allen had this specially made for himself wrote it for a while and then donated to us here at the Museum in back of that we have a Jordan this maroon bike which is actually a shaft drive shaft drive motorcycle rather than a belt or a chain other motorcycles we have Honda number one which was the motocross champion we have another bike of Steve McQueen's here this is a 1929 Indian chief Steve actually had hundreds of motorcycles we were told that this particular one was one that he rode quite a bit next to that we have a 1932 harley-davidson highway patrol bike then we have a bull taco this bull taco actually in the 70s won its class and the tourist trophy as you know the Isle of Man in the back we have a couple of motorcycles with side cars the one on the right is an early harley-davidson with sidecar and the one on the left is a Norton with sidecar as you notice the side cars are on opposite sides of course the sidecar in America was on the right and in Europe was on the left and this was this enclosed sidecar was very popular in Europe at the time because you were taxed on the number of wheels you had when you registered a vehicle so this particular vehicle has three wheels - on the motorcycle one on the sidecar and you could actually fit two people in the sidecar two people on the motorcycle so you could only pay taxes on three wheels to transport a family of four whereas if you had a car and you were had a family of four you would pay taxes on on four wheels and the bike in front of that this Harley was owned by the late Jesse Owens this was her bike she used she was grand marshal of Sturgis in 2019 and there was of the bike this was her bike we have other customs Indians we do have the de moto cam which is a studio bike a camera bike so this was a motorcycle it had a sled where two cameraman would sit one with a handheld one with a pedestal mount camera the bike was synced with was able to sync with the cameras so they could sync with camera speeds and and make it much easier in transition from scene to scene this particular bike was used in several of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies now and then we have chip Yates electric motorcycle so the electric motorcycle that you see right here chip-chip Yates set a world record for the fastest electric motorcycle in a big pod in the back that you see there that is the that's where the batteries were kept all right looking across again as I mentioned as we went up the line we saw the 1903 Cadillac the 1904 Studebaker horse-drawn carriage these are other in front of us you'll see so a couple of Model T's and a Chevy and you can see how over the years these are late teens that automobile design changed you started to get windshields you started to get enclosed cabins lower riding position steering wheel on the left chrome brass started turning to nickel in chrome they were thinking not only about transportation but actually how the vehicle looked and creature comforts and they started it's really as the automobile started to evolve it became more and more about the driver and less about just transporting a person now as we continue up the line we're going to jump ahead many several years and you're gonna see probably you know pre-war luxury what a pre-war luxury look like in America we're talking you know 30s into the you know very early 40s just before the war broke out we have a couple of Packard's this Packard that you see call it looks like a creamsicle it's orange and and beige this was actually the daily driver of a fan dancer back in the late 20s early 30s I don't know if any of you would would recall the name Sallie ran but she was very famous now fan dancing at the time was basically she was an exotic dancer but what she would do is she would use fans in her routine and hide what she didn't want to show behind the feathered fans next to that we have two front-wheel drive cars these are America's first front-wheel drive cars 19 29 and 30 we have a Ruxton in a crazy paint scheme and this was roxton's marketing department thinking that you know people would want to buy their car not just because it was front-wheel drive but because it was very stylish with these crazy paint jobs they had a car that called the bumblebee that was painted black and yellow they had a bluing and lime-green car they had all these crazy schemes but unfortunately it really didn't help out the sales of the automobile which car which front-wheel drive a car that was more successful was the one that we have next and this is the cord but still front-wheel drive at the time back in 29 and 30 you know hadn't been completely developed yet and people didn't like the heavy steering they didn't like the fact there was no transmission tunnel or that they were that the cars were lower but the steering was very heavy it would kind of hop around corners so it fell out of favor and everything then became rear-wheel drive but as you know what goes around comes around and and then you know in the future everything became front-wheel drive probably the most luxurious car in the 30s that you see here is the Duesenberg so this is a 32 Duesenberg SJ SJ meaning supercharged so this was the luxury car of the time here in America in order to buy this car the way you bought a Duesenberg is you will buy a chassis and you would buy an engine from Duesenberg and then you would take it to a coach builder or have Duesenberg of course recommend one the coach builder or I would say the body builder whoever the coach builder will build the the body the interior the fenders the accompaniments that would all be done by the coach builder this particular Duesenberg was coach built by Murphy who was right here in Pasadena California now as I was saying this would cost you probably around ten thousand dollars to get the engine and the transmission back back in the early 30s then you would have to pay for the coach work so it was a very expensive car and the expression do Z came from the Duesenberg because the supercharged Duesenberg had a very distinct exhaust note so if you heard that sound coming you knew had to be someone with a lot of money someone that was very important in order to be driving a Duesenberg across from us we have a European luxury car 1927 Rolls Royce and this was the the car of Fred Astaire this was the car that his chauffeur would drive him to MGM studios in every day where he would dance with all of his partners making movies and and I'm sure most of you are familiar with Fred Astaire Ginger Rogers his career as an actor and a dancer very very stately car very very beautiful as you can see the chauffeurs car was basically unprotected they were you could roll up the windows and there was a fabric top that stretched over it but the passenger komarin the compartment excuse me was very luxurious it has silk upholstery it would usually have flowers and wool carpeting as a matter of fact I'm going to open the store so you can just take a peek and see how beautiful the interior the car is and also on the back of this car is a Louis Vuitton trunk now trunks in automobile trunks got their name because they started off his trunks these these would be trunks they would be travel trunks theatrical trunks whatever you needed to carry a lot your belongings in went into a trunk the trunk was then attached to the back of the automobile became the trunk and hence now our trunks are an integral part of a car instead of something that's attached to the back on a right hand side we have a model a woody we have several Woody's here at the Museum this is a 32 Model A they call that a Depot hack it's a wooden body it would transport people I was used to transport people luggage baggage any kind of commodities to and from their train depot the sides were fabric and they would roll up and we have like I said several Woody's here at the Museum and the same thing Ford was very smart when he started to build woody wagons which were very popular in that he bought several forests so he actually grew his own trees supplied his own wood so he never had to worry about a shortage or someone saying that they didn't want to sell him any wood now as we go into the outer vault as you notice there is it's like a sieve cars here we have classics we have hot rods we have racecars custom we're going to just take a walk down a couple of the lines here we have a little white car on a left-hand side here that is a Honda a 64 Honda 600 and that is actually serial number zero zero one so that is the first Honda that was exported to the United States first production Honda 600 it came to the United States like I said in the 60s and and what's interesting is that it it's very small so they took they took quite a chance on sending it in the late 60s to the United States where what we had is we were in we were starting to get our muscle cars big v8 well like the cars across from us here these are pre sixties these are 50s but we have a 57 Chevy convertible now our convertible and next to that we have the Nomad the Nomad was a station wagon version and of the Bel Air and very very popular very popular with surfers like myself it was great you could put surfboards in it it's it was basically the precursor to the beach wagon one car that I do want to show you that I kind of passed over a little bit here is this red so this is a 1957 caddy beer it's bromb and at the time in 1957 this was the most expensive car American car that you could buy it's beautiful it's extremely long but it's it's well appointed had air conditioning it had power power seats it was a it was just a beautiful car but like I said it was the most expensive car that you could buy at the time now as we go down the line you'll see more brass era cars on our right excuse me not brassy we have one press you require but the looks like it's has nickel trim as you can see the nickel was up until the late 20s early 30s and it became Chrome and as you got into the 30s as we saw with those luxury cars the cars became bigger they became more comfortable for the driver and they had a lot of appointments like mirrors and and multiple lights parking lights and headlights and chrome radiator shells and ornaments and things like that in our center row here we have several hot rods and hot rods and custom rods we have Foose Coddington Troy Barris we have a gasser and a gasser as a drag car it's this particular class of drag car this is hammer time but we have next to it is we have a Corvair Corsa now the Corsa Corvair was a turbocharged car so this is a car a very early turbocharged car that you could buy from Chevy and it was a factory turbocharged Chevy custom next to that we have a Ford Galaxie custom this is a twin-turbo Ford Galaxie with a full roll cage we have some more hot rods on our right we have a 32 Ford powered by a Porsche 928 engine behind that we have another 32 Ford this yellow 32 Ford Phaeton was actually a van hey car that van Halen owned and it was used in a couple of music videos the most famous one I think was hot for teacher where David Lee Roth is it says painted on the side it says hot for teacher he's driving it with many bikini clad girls in the car we have a 4-4-2 on my left a very restored car that's that is close to a hundred point car every nut and bolt is as it would have come out from the factory we have a Kirkland and this was a Bonneville car and it was the first car to every use a parachute at Bonneville we have several Ford's we have a ml roadster we have these Ford's here on the left hand side our we have a 50 wrench hero 57 Ranchero 57 Fairlane 55 Fairlane 57 s convertible 55 we have a nice little 32 Ford pickup hot rod this has air conditioning power brakes power steering automatic transmission this was done by Brizzy Oh a great car some more customs on the left is the Studebaker called Franken stood that custom has been on many many covers let's see more hot rods like I said Foose and Cottington and as you can see when I said there we have over 250 cars motorcycles trucks would probably have that plus and as we continue through we're gonna go up the center island in the center aisle we have some heads of state cars we have some Hollywood cars and then as you know or if you didn't know mr. Peterson's claim to fame the first he the first he was a publisher but the first magazine that he published was actually Hot Rod Magazine and this is mr. Peterson's daily driver it's a twin-turbo Bentley with a license plate hot rod if you saw that license plate and you wondered why mr. Peterson started and owned hot rod magazine you own Petersen publication of course he had at the height of his career he had 42 publications including Motor Trend Field & Stream Guns & Ammo car craft anything automotive and sports related he also had Peterson aviation and but Petersen publishing also did a lot of self-help books you you've probably read them it's one point or another how to out of hot rod year your small-block Chevy how did the 289 Ford how to swap engine swap Volkswagens now the car that you're looking at right now is a LAN delay at the Mercedes LAN delay which is a very rare model of Mercedes in which the passenger compartments are convertible the drivers the chauffeurs compartment is a hardtop this particular car has little steps on the side it looks a little beat-up and that is because it was Saddam Hussein's car so this was the car that Saddam Hussein was driven around until the fall the fall of the Shah the car eventually made its way to Jordan it was industry pair I was left in disrepair in Jordan and mr. Peterson was able to acquire it as a as a LAN delay and then when he bought it he realized that they realized that it was saddam hussein's on the across from that we have a couple of Hollywood cars we have a 1941 Cadillac that was Clark Gable had customized here in Los Angeles right from the dealer for to give to his love Carole Lombard as a gift birthday gift unfortunately if you know the Carole Lombard story she didn't get to drive it much because on her way back from selling war bonds the plane crashed and she perished and if you notice there's a pink car next to that this is a pink Lincoln Imperial and this Lincoln Imperial was their daily driver of Jayne Mansfield the actress and Jayne Mansfield of course was was killed in an automobile accident this is not the car that she was killed in but the one she was killed in was hit the back of a tractor-trailer and what happened was basically the car went underneath the back of the trailer when the trailer stopped suddenly that's why now if you're ever following a tractor-trailer and you see these bars underneath them and usually they have safety tape on them or something those are called Mansfield bars after Jayne Mansfield after her accident coming up we have a red Delahaye that was the car of Elton John's we have grease lightning from grease this is from the musical Grease not the not the movie but the musical toured the country with Olivia newton-john and this was the car that was built by Barris and used used for that musical cross from that we have the popemobile which which is actually a brand new pope evil in that it was never used by the Pope unfortunately the Vatican commissioned it from General Motors it was built but just as it was finished the Swiss Guard said that they didn't want the Pope to ride in an unprotected automobile because they had been an attempt on his life so all cars had to have could not be convertibles so the Pope blessed this car got in the car blessed the car and now it resides here at the Petersen museum it's interesting the the seat that the Pope sits in that will go up and down to make it easy for him to raise the seat so he can stand to easily just lean back in the chair and then go down when the doors open General Motors put in these stairs that automatically come out was easy for the Pope to get in and out of the car so unfortunately a great popemobile but unusable going back over switching back over to Hollywood cars we have a eighteen hundred's newest spreader that's been converted into a hot rod with a with a mid-engine small-block Chevy Conestoga wagon top that was a gift to Bob Hope from excuse me that was commissioned by Bob Hope to give to John Wayne as a birthday gift a pretty crazy gift but definitely has the western cowboy motif and coming down the line after that we have a custom Mustang so this is a 1965 Ford Mustang highly customized by George Barris for the movie marriage on the rocks with Frank Sinatra and Nancy Sinatra they were they were both in that movie it has a zebra fabric on the sides and zebra upholstery it's a pretty pretty wild car next to that a 1948 Chevy fleetmaster convertible donated to us by Jack Nicholson this particular car was used in the movie the two Jakes and I think also probably in Chinatown we have Austin Powers shag mobile from the movie The Spy that shagged me this was Austin Powers time machine where he would go back into the 60s and in the movie and they used that and it was perfectly used a VW because it was kind of that flowerpower 60s vibe to it next to that we have Magnum PI's Ferrari that he used in his series and this is a car this is a car that he actually drove in the series hence the driver's seat was lowered they repositioned the bottom cushion and still he was so tall that he could never drive the car with the top on so if you ever watch the series you'll notice that no matter what he's always driving that car without the top which which made perfect sense because it was shot in Hawaii in and the weather is pretty good most of the time in Hawaii back across we have h eike and this was this is a Russian car this was commissioned by Nikita Khrushchev he had two of these made and this particular one he gave as a gift Yuri Gagarin who was the first man in space the first Russian in space and Yuri had the car for a short period of time and he passed away and then the Khrushchev took a back in ownership for the Russian government so that would be a Russian head of state car I'm it was convertible the top would go down and Russian dignitaries would sit there and wave we have the Volkswagen from Little Miss Sunshine and you can notice that there's a dent that you they get in the movie is right there on the side this was this was the car driven in in the movie and that and that's what's great about a lot of the cars here in the museum they are the original cars from either the movies the TV shows or used for the promotional purposes but they are the actual cars that were used Chrysler Imperial a daily driver of Catherine hepburn across from me we have a Hong ji another head of state car so this Hong ji was was a Chinese car Hong ji means red flag as you can see it has two red flags on the front this was for no particular dignitary or head of state in particular but any important person that was visiting China this is the car that they would ride in it it's also said that the dalai lama had ridden in this car several times continuing down the line we have a chrysler camera car that Chrysler made three of those this particular one was given to Howard Hughes at RKO studios and up until this time camera cars were just anything that the studio could find that jury-rigged all these pipes and tubes on them to carry cameras but this particular one that Chrysler built convertible air-conditioning Platteville platform in the back very easy to erect camera stands and and made a big difference in filming starts Italia we have a Mustang from Creed to movie the yellow car right here it's worth just letting you know this was Elvis Presley's car Elvis Presley had purchased this for his girlfriend Linda Thompson this is the car that the stories go and you've probably heard them and it is true that Elvis shot three times and there are there are some Nick's in the steering wheel the holes in the floorboard where the bullets passed through Elvis had a temper I didn't just shoot cars he also shot televisions when he didn't like what he saw on television three more Hollywood cars we have Herbie from Lindsay Lohan's fully loaded movie and that is a NASCAR certified Herbie meaning this car could run on a NASCAR oval which it does in the movie and it's it was clocked at on the Oval doing 136 miles an hour out of 200 horsepower modified VW engine next to that we have thumber and Weeze Thunderbird that was used in the movie no mirror and you can notice the mirrors are missing on the sides that's where the camera mounts were and of course this snuck the car they drove off the cliff but it is the car that they used in a lot of the driving sequences in which they would be sitting in the car talking next to that we have the Plymouth Fury Christine as you know Christine is the evil car Christine kills people and then when damaged can morph it herself back together across from Christine we have a an imperial this was the parade car of Eisenhower also used by the astronauts for ticker tape parades Richard Nixon actually also used this card they made three of these Chrysler did one for New York one for Los Angeles and one for Detroit so that wherever the president was or an astronaut or a parade they would be able to use the car closest this one was the Detroit car and this is the only car that is in private hands the other two cars still belonged to the cities of Los Angeles and New York across from this just looking over here we have a Nash Healey used by Clark Kent in a Superman TV series we have cheese satalia we have a Fiat 8v Delahaye as we go down the line a Porsche Continental several Porsches we have the Mercedes all the way down the end 600 that was used in the movies the movie witches of eastwick which also came to us from Jack Nicholson worth mentioning this little Porsche Continental was only made for one year it was actually three fit they made the 356 when they supported it to the United States they want they decided to call it Porsche decided to call it the Continental when it landed here of course Ford said you can't do that we own the name Continental so it was this was only for one year in 54 and then it became went back to the Porsche 356 a Pedrosa designed and built by the Spanish the son of the Spanish Spanish King we have as we come down here further on the line as you can see over as we look over over these cars you see some woodies over there you see a pickup truck custom pickup truck hot rod I mean it's endless we could go on and on and on and on but we're trying to give you a quick sampling of what we have down here and all of these cars have extended stories I mean you could stand here and and talk about its history its mechanics the people that had it the people that drove it where they were used incredible amounts of information everything every car is unique coming through here of course I would say probably our crown jewel this is a 1925 rolls-royce that was rebodied in 1932 as the round or rolls-royce specifically to win shows in Europe which it did it won every single show that it entered as you can see it's called a round or a rolls-royce because it has round doors it's an aerodynamic coupe it resembles inside the cockpit of an aircraft in the 30s it has a slanted grille which most rolls-royce purists don't care for but that was the way it was designed it was coach build in Belgium by Yaqui air coach builders and they had never done a car before actually this is the first car they ever did they usually did lorries and trucks and commercial vehicles and maybe that's why it's so huge it's over 20 feet long and weighs 8,000 pounds but it retains the stock 100 for our engine so takes a while to get up to speed and then takes a while to stop but it is a stunning stunning car it is it is really beautiful fin on the back louvers it has matching luggage in the back across from that here we have another 8,000 pound car for a different reason this was the armored car of FDR you know after Pearl Harbor the American government realized that FDR needed a armored car so this is this is actually the first presidential armored car armored limousine this belonged to FDR the glass in it is an inch 1/8 thick as lead-lined doors it has steel mesh surrounding the engine compartment so that it could still be cooled but it could stop bullets if need be and like I said it's it's it weighs almost 8,000 pounds it actually when they first constructed it it broke the rear end and the frame they had to put a truck differential in it and beefed up the frame but it it served its purpose and protected the president coming around here we have some independence we have a 1948 Tucker as you know with a a helicopter engine in the back and it's a rear-engine car and Preston Tucker was really all about safety has so many safety features in it to protect the occupants and it has a cyclops headlight that turns with a steering wheel and then across on that we have another independent davis and it's called it's a three wheeler that you see green it's a Davis divan called die van because it has one seat and that seat is a bench seat and that seat was advertised as sitting four people across that was built here actually it venture airport is is where that was being built but they ran into financial difficulties long story to that but it was also a three not very stable a Kaiser Darren with pocket doors very unique feature the doors this light in and out of the front fenders a good idea and not so good idea when the doors would get stuck would become a safety issue but that is I would say probably America's first fiberglass car because that actually that's a fiberglass body that predates the Corvette going down the line we're looking at time here so we'll we'll just touch on some cars here on the Left we have blind faith El Camino mid-engine El Camino powered by a oldsmobile toronado engine it's right behind the front seat and it's the first Hot Wheels car then we have some lowriders actually this particular turquoise lowrider this Chevy Impala was is belongs to Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top and it's called slam pala because it slammed to the ground a very famous lowrider El Rey and also L raised I call it el rey son [Music] we have several hot rods customs the may thong we have the math on v16 which is basically two small-block Chevy siamese together and then as we go down we're going to see amber winners America's most beautiful hot rods we have winners from many different years I think we have about ten ten first-place winners here we have sniper which is a highly customized Viper has the v10 we have amber winners customs Cadillac lowrider Huggy Bear and next to that we have the Triton which has probably been in every custom in Hot Rod Magazine it's a 59 El Camino and a 60 Cadillac that I miss I miss together with many many custom features on it next to that we have a 1951 Hudson wasp that was Steve McQueen's daily driver that's what Steve drove when he didn't want anyone to know that Steve McQueen was around in driving but see we have the first amber winner this is the knee camp roadster from the first competition was a 1951 and this is the car that won the amber competition in 1951 just looking back here we have a couple of important god-- we have two hanson cobras this is the Hanson brothers they wanted to go into the car manufacturing business they designed and built these cars themselves these are the two prototypes that they built there was one other car they look alike but they had similar they had they're similar but they had differences to them unfortunately they look really I think too much like Corvettes they do use Corvette windshields and and it just they just couldn't get the funding and were able to go into production we have to dragsters here we have flathead jacks fastest flathead in the world and that has two flathead Ford Siamese together the crank is is was machined in one piece then cut in half and then spline together and then over here behind me we have John forces funny car this was the last Ford Mustang funny car that that John Force raced he after this he's now he went over to Chevy so he's now racing Chevy's and his his daughter is also raised in a very successful and he donated this to us which were very thankful for it's an incredible car I mean this is you know they're going from a standing stop to the end of a quarter of a mile and they weigh over 300 miles an hour so you can just imagine you know you get in there you turn the thing on and and hold on for dear life a couple couple more customs on our left there the yellow one is the Illuma coupe which is actually a Mitsubishi the one on the left the red one is actually a Lexus ls400 will pass this truck that we're passing here is what they call a wood burner during the second war in Europe they farmers and merchants couldn't get their goods to market so inventors and entrepreneurs found out that superheated charcoal gas was actually combustible with no special equipment so this particular truck has a furnace that sticks up in the back where you would burn wood you would start the truck on gasoline you would burn wood which gives off charcoal gas when the charcoal gas got to the right temperature you would and it would be injected right into the intake manifold like I said no special equipment required you would wean off your gasoline and turn on your charcoal gas and they were able to get their goods to market and just run on charcoal gas of course the efficiency was probably 30% that of of gasoline we have the malko gasser funny car we have the set of 57 said Co which Chevy drag car that you could you could buy from Chevy dealers we have sampling of race cars here on the left I'm still going up the road you can see golden star you can see orange twist root beer alien xr6 all of amber winners we have a Renault Alpine that an 1800 CC this is this particular car was one of the factory team cars that won the first World Rally Championship in nineteen I think was 72 and very very 6th that which led to a very successful racing run for Renault and Alpine we have Eddie Lawson's BMW we have Matt Kenseth Kenseth's winning Winston Cup car he actually won the Cup with this car and it and having done that he only won one race and he was able to win the Cup so they there was a rule change right after he won the Cup and now you hear the chase for the Cup the run for the cup that's because of the rule changes and we have a couple of gold cars we have gold DeLorean which is actually a there were three of these made a commission by American Express when they came out with the gold card they are 24 karat karat gold plated DeLoreans this particular one belonged to a banker in Texas who never drove it mr. Petersen obtained the car and it's never been driven as five miles on it just from pushing it's no way you could repair it the bodywork it's very it would scratch and once something happened to the gold finish you would not be able to to repair it unless you took her to a jewelry store I guess one millionth Mustang they be built 50 1 millionth Mustangs all painted gold and you could not buy these but you could win them in her in a lottery you would go into a Ford dealer and you would enter a contest and next to the Mustang here we have a 1964 Dodge Coronet so this was a Dodge race car actually ok and right next to the gold Mustang we have a 1964 Dodge Polara I excuse me yeah and right next to the gold Mustang we have a 1964 Dodge Coronet so this is a race car you can buy right off the deal of floor it's powered by a 426 Hemi it has all the deletes and by deletes I mean no wheel covers no radio no air-conditioning anything that would Rob power and add weight to the car was deleted you could buy it that way so that you could drive right from the dealer to the racetrack across from that we have I would say another crown jewel of ours it's a Kia Cadillac so this 1954 Ghia Cadillac was one of two cars so Cadillac sent their engine and chassis to Italy to Ghia Agia built this beautiful body and it was shown at the Paris Auto Show I never went into production just two of them this one though was purchased it was purchased by the richest man in the world of the time the ali khan given to his wife at the time Rita Hayworth the actress dancer the redhead and he gave it to her as a gift hoping that it would improve the relationship in their marriage didn't but she kept it and it was your daily driver and then behind that is another gear this is a Plymouth Kia so as you can see some similarities in the bodies but auto manufacturers American auto manufacturers would would do that they would send their chassis zand drivetrains to europe to different coach builders to have them build a concept car and most of them we actually call them dream cars also these were cars that were supposed to have a futuristic look to them for the time and but the Italian styling is is drop-dead gorgeous as we come up the line we have the XR we have a Nash Healey but this is the coupe version we have a continental 56 continental and is earlier in the tour I told you that the Caddy Biarritz in 57 was the most expensive car in America that you could buy while that 56 Continental was the most expensive car that you could buy in 56 and Cadillac didn't like that that's why they came out with the beer it's that particular car was purchased in 56 and when you purchase the cars they came completely loaded you couldn't add anything to them at all no no add-ons as is but it was it was fully loaded and coming into the interval we have a lot of sports and supercars on my right-hand side we have three carbon-fiber MacLaren's we have the MSO on the right in the middle we have the McLaren p1 and to the left of the p1 we have the brand new McLaren Senna of course named after the famous f1 driver Ayrton Senna next to those we have an older supercar which is a Jaguar xj220 powered by a twin-turbo v6 unfortunately that was the car that was supposed to come out with a v12 supposed to do too 20 they couldn't do it the v12 didn't work in their engineering-wise they ended up putting a twin-turbo v6 and it only obtained I think 217 miles an hour top speed so it fell short of the 220 which angered a lot of people on our left over here we have a Porsche 928 next to that of Ferrari barqueta but this little orange Mazda here is actually a solid clay car excuse me I was thinking of something else this is a this was the prototype so this is a fiberglass body car and it doesn't have doors it doesn't really have an interior it looks like it's it's the concept so this would be what they had in the design studio and all the heads of Mazda could look at the car and decide whether they liked it or not it was at this point that they could make any any style changes before they they went into full production next to that we have the 55 Thunderbird and of course a favorite of mine we have the 1952 Ferrari barqueta this is an all original car original paint original interior it was built specifically for a Henry Ford by Enzo Ferrari next to that we have a 59 Corvette scale Yeti there were three Corvettes Cal Yeti is made this is one of the three we have a Jaguar SS 100 and then my all-time favorite in the whole museum we have the 56 57 Jaguar xkss Road version of the d-type Jaguar owned by Steve McQueen 56 Corvette second generation Ford 427 and then in the corner the red car is a Porsche 901 which is only probably one of a handful that exists still in the world today that was the precursor to the 911 Pujo made Porsche stopped calling of a 901 before it went into full production although that had been produced were supposed to have been destroyed this is one of the ones that that has survived so when this is 64 901 right after that it went to the 911 in the middle here we have a 1961 Jaguar outside latch II eat type coupe one of only 20 actually that were built beautiful beautiful car the e-type coupes I think are some of the most beautiful cars the two in the middle are old yellers they were built by max Bell Chomsky he built about 10 of them mark 1 through mark 10 the one here in front is a mark 3 the one in the back is a mark 9 both powered by Buick nailhead 's they've called old yellers after the movie Disney movie Old Yeller Old Yeller was about a dog got junkyard dog max used to build these cars out of junkyard parts he wouldn't buy new parts just the engines Buick would give him the engines people say that he was probably the skunk works for Buick and he would do work on the engines he would do research for them report back to them he would never quote horse power figures he always said he could get more speed out of a Buick engine than anyone else now behind us we have on our right we have the maroon car in the far right is one of two of the first Ferraris produced 1947 it was the first Ferrari we believe we're hoping to get it validated by Ferrari Classic in Modena they've been over inspected the car they're doing the research we believe it's the first production Ferrari the first Ferrari ever to wear the Prancing Horse badge they were to build we believe this is the first one of those next to that is the Dodge Viper Dodge Viper was a powered by the v10 you probably saw a sniper before the custom that I said was a v10 this is the actual kuiper this is one of six pre-production models if you want you know what several these cars if you want to get more information on these cars you can go onto our website and look up driving with Dana I've driven several of these cars and in driving them I talked about the car performance figures and you can actually see the cars on the road we have the Ferrari 70th anniversary we have the 456 challenge car painted by Tyler the title is a family miss artist that hangs from a trapeze and drops paint that's how he painted that and then we have the third generation GTO this is the 599 Ferrari 599 GTO of course they made the 250 GTO 288 and the 599 in front of me we have to race cars from the 20s the one on the Left raced sister car race lamal and the Indy 500 it's a 1929 DuPont and the one on the right is a Mercedes and this this Mercedes is otago Floreal they made three of these it was made specifically for the tiger tiger' flora race in Italy and it is powered by a corsets and Mercedes before Mercedes was mercedes-benz or but the engine in it is a Daimler at the time Daimler was building aircraft engines and that's the only engine that Mercedes thought would would work for an endurance race because it could run all day long at maximum torque and horsepower at only 1,800 rpm on right we have the new generation of Ford GT powered by the EcoBoost twin turbo v6 next to that we have the 2006 Ford GT and this particular it was built for the hundredth anniversary of Ford and it pays homage to the Ford gt40 we're lucky enough on the on the third floor of the museum here to have a 1967 gt40 one of for road versions that has left-hand drive across for me here we have a regal brassier car and we have probably America's first supercar this is a 1913 Mercer built in built here in in the states in Delaware this particular car when it was stripped down was said to go anywhere between 85 and 100 miles an hour back in 1913 I've driven this car it's it's it's a handful and I say that I love it but when you get to speed you have to hand maintain fuel pressure and oil pressure by hand pumps has no front wheel brakes in order to get brake pressure you have to use the foot pedal and the and the hand brake it has built-in anti-theft device and that is as I say it's a crank start it takes a good 15 20 minutes to get that started but what an incredible car for 1913 that about does it for this part of the vault we're going to end by going into the shop we have a shop here we have technicians that maintain preserve do some restoration of the collection and through the we've been very lucky through the generosity of Tom and Sharon Malloy who had who have funded a project to renovate a shop area so it's it's worthy of the world's greatest automotive museum with new cabinets polished floors lifts we're gonna go in here now and just take a quick look around before we leave the vault and as you can see on our left-hand side we have the first Indy car one of the first Indy cars for the first year after the Second World War when Indy Racing picked back up again that's a 1946 Curtis often Hauser is a Frank Curtis design specifically for the Indy 500 powered by an often Hauser supercharged engine not a very safe car the the fuel tank wraps all around you drive shaft is right there you're pretty exposed so in the shop area we like I said we have the technicians that maintain the automobiles but it's also you never know what's going to be in here it's constantly changing we have cars coming in cars going out cars being stage for future exhibits we as you can see we have a [ __ ] racer we have a Tesla s we have a 2016 911 RSR we have a couple of Indy cars on our right AJ Foyt Jr's coyote we have Robby Gordon's all-american racing IndyCar we have Bobby Rahal's last ride this is the last car that Bobby Rahal drove in his driving career before he switched over to team management and team ownership we're very lucky also to have Bobby Ray Hall as one of our board members we have Lola t70 we have a American Eagle Toyota gtp car we have a Denny Hulme bodied McLaren m8te we have Jack Brabham's first race car this is the car that he raised himself the first car that he raced the first car that he designed before going on to being a three-time Formula One world champion and champion car designer and racer Cale Yarborough's Hardy's car we have a very tall car this is a 1910 Daimler this is the royal coach used by king george v next to that we have a Detroit electric in all original state but this is what an electric car would look like in 1914 and as you can see the interior the car is almost like a parlor it would be like your living room what you would sit in it was designed specifically well they were looking at women when they were designing something like this because it had the head room where a woman could sit up and and wear her big hat it was electric car so she didn't have to try to hand crank the car and it was very very very comfortable unfortunately it has a short range so you were the only one with the charger and if you went too far you wouldn't be able to get home on the right hand side we have four of four race cars from the Bruce Meyer collection Bruce is also one of our board members and Beverly Hills collector and we had an exhibit on his cars called winning numbers they were all winning cars whether they were the first or the fastest they're the yellow grayer black poodle dragster was probably one of the most winning dragsters of the 1960s driven by as you know Don Purdum known as the snake the first Shelby Cobra number one there were only two of course first one was the prototype and this was the first production Cobra next to that is a Ferrari 250gt short wheelbase lightweight aluminum factory race car this place first in class in the 1961 women's and third overall next to that 65 bit cerini which also placed first in class in the 65 of them all next to that is 59 scimitar one of only three scimitars that were built each one with a different body style based on - New Yorker and as we go back toward the sharp again we have a three-wheeled truckster we have some projects here back there in the distance is a packard sports car powered by a v12 Packard in front of that is a core what we see here in gray is a Corvette this is a 1963 Corvette restomod that'll be finished this is powered by a an LS motor all racing suspension but with the appearance of an original 63 split-window then we have actually assist my my daily driver or was up until I have to do I'm doing an engine rebuild and a transmission rebuild this is called Tomb Raider it's a 1973 Land Rover series 388 inch wheelbase it's been spent time in South Australia with a with a documentary film company like I said it's been on Jay Leno it's been all over the world it's my daily driver a fantastic car I love it and as we come back into the middle I just want to say that I you know I want to thank you all for joining me today on this tour and through the weeks we're going to have will have several tours all week long just please tune into our website get the times you know and any donation that you do make goes to help us you know through the time when we're closed here at the museum we're a non-profit and we also have an educational program so they not just fall tours we also have programs will tell you how to build things why how things work why things work really a lot a lot of great stuff so on that note I want to say goodbye I want to say thank you for joining me and be healthy and be safe thank you

Channel: Petersen Automotive Museum

Views: 460,037

Rating: 4.8550324 out of 5

Keywords: petersen museum vault, vintage cars, shmee car collection, worlds rarest cars top 10, most expensive car in the world, most expensive cars, top 10 fastest cars, mclaren vs, mclaren vs ferrari, shmee best car collection, most expensive cars ever, bugatti collection, exotic cars beverly hills, petersen vault, petersen vault cars, jay lenos bugatti collection, jay leno garage, jay lenos cars collection

Id: e0IzyESwcTw

Length: 66min 4sec (3964 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 04 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/sonicjetjoe]

The collection 😍