Petersen Automotive Museum

The Petersen Automotive Museum, located in Los Angeles’ Miracle Mile district, showcases a vast collection of over 100 vehicles spanning more than a century of automotive history. Visitors can explore permanent galleries, special exhibits, and interactive displays that highlight the impact of automobiles on culture and society. The museum also offers educational programs, guided tours, and hosts various automotive events throughout the year.

Planning your visit

The Petersen is impossible to miss on Wilshire Boulevard — a red block wrapped in swooping stainless steel ribbons meant to suggest airflow over a car body, a design as divisive as anything in Los Angeles architecture. Inside are over 100 vehicles across three themed floors covering the history of the automobile, its engineering, and specifically its cultural role in Southern California, where car culture was substantially invented. Hollywood vehicles, hot rods, customs, racing machinery and concept cars rotate through alongside the permanent displays.

The real draw for enthusiasts is the Vault: the basement storage holding around 250 further vehicles not on public display, accessible only on a guided tour. It includes rarities, one-offs, celebrity-owned cars and pieces too valuable or fragile to exhibit permanently, and it is a genuinely different experience from the galleries above — closer to walking through a private collection.

Bookable options include general admission tickets, private highlights tours of the main galleries, and Vault access tours, which carry a separate charge and limited group sizes. Booking the Vault ahead matters because slots are capped and photography rules differ from the main museum. The Miracle Mile location puts it alongside LACMA and the La Brea Tar Pits, which makes a museum-heavy day easy to assemble without moving the car. Current availability is shown below.