Supercars! Hypercars! Concept Cars! And, Uh, EVs at Petersen Museum

It’s a quadruple whammy.

The big Porsche exhibit was a hit at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. But when it had run its course and was being packed up to make room for something new, there was so much space that museum staff decided to fill it with not one new exhibit, but four.

Hence, as of right now you can go up to the museum’s second floor and see all of them, in addition to the continuing Lowrider exhibit that still shines on the first floor. Here they all are.

Super/Hyper: The Ultimate Automobiles

The Petersen museum has had supercar exhibits in the past, most recently in 2020 and 2021.

“A lot of people have wanted to see hypercars,” said curator Jonathan Eisen. “So we have settled on a rotating selection of cars that represent the best of their eras.”

What’s the difference between a supercar and a hypercar? Argue all you want, but the Petersen says the Lamborghini Miura was the first supercar and the Bugatti Veyron was the first hypercar. That’s as good a delineation as any.

There are cars you almost certainly haven’t ever seen, including: a 2022 Apollo Intensa Emozione that is worth it just for the complex aerodynamic forms hanging on its back end; a 2020 Bugatti Divo the specs of which will fry your brain (an 8.0-liter, 1500-hp quad-turbocharged, W16 good for 0-60 mph in 2.4 seconds and a top speed of 236 mph); and something called a 2002 XENO III, with a golden exoskeleton that would leave Maurits Cornelis Escher confused. The latter car is actually part of the next exhibit, but we’ve elevated it into hypercar status just because it looks so outrageous.

The hypercars have been especially popular among younger audiences, Eisen said.

“There have been a lot of selfies taken, a lot of Instagram posts made,” he said.

Hashtag #thepetersen.

Modern Concepts: Future Visions from the Recent Past

This might be your favorite of the four new exhibits if you remember these iconic concepts. The most compelling of them might be three lined up along a wall comprising the dream cars: The 1995 Ford GT90, 2002 Cadillac Cien, and the 2004 Chrysler ME Four-Twelve.

The amount of energy put into chasing down rumors of the imminent production of these drove car magazine staffs and car magazine readers crazy throughout that zany decade. Ask me how I know. Ultimately, none of them was ever made, each for its own reasons, not necessarily having to do with the profitability of the models at the upper, upper end of the market.

But for enthusiasts of a certain age, they remain the coolest things ever made. Just as the best concepts always have seemed.

“The idea was to show concepts from the museum’s founding to today,” said Eisen. “Thus, the name, Future Visions from the Recent Past.”

They could still make that Cien. And the Ford GT90 still looks like a worthy successor to the neo-retro GT of recent vintage. Even the Chrysler ME Four-Twelve might lift that sagging company back into profitability. But they didn’t listen to us then and they probably won’t listen to us now.

Alternating Currents: The Fall and Rise of Electric Vehicles

Automotive historians know that electric cars have been around as long as the internal-combustion car, but the general public might not.

“At the turn of the century, electric vehicles were actually the most popular over both steam and gas-powered because they were quiet, they were clean, and they were easy to operate,” said curator Autumn Nyiri. “But they did have downsides. It took a long time to charge them. And obviously they couldn’t be used in rural areas, because a lot of those people didn't even have electricity. So as gas became more widely available, and then with the adoption in the mid-1910s of the electric starter for gasoline cars, gas took over as the primary method of propulsion. And by the mid-1930s, electric vehicles were pretty much gone from the market.”

But the purpose of a museum is as much to educate as to inspire, so the Petersen is once again looking back at EVs, especially with their current popularity.

“Most of our visitors probably don’t realize that electric vehicles started out at the turn of the century, as being as popular if not more popular than the gas or steam alternatives,” said Nyiri. “We call it the Fall and Rise of Electric Vehicles because so many people think that today is the rise of electric vehicles. But they rose once before and then there was a fall and then there were brief little spurts. So we want people to realize that electric vehicles have been around for a very long time. And that the moment that we’re in was led up to by some great predecessors.”

Driven by Possibility: Waymo’s Road to Autonomous Transport

One thing that lends itself to electric propulsion is the driverless car, and Waymo has taken over the north wall of the museum’s second floor with a history of its efforts in that regard. The exhibit starts with a clip from the Woody Allen comedy Sleeper, about a guy who finds himself in the future being driven around in an autonomous car.

Then we see the DARPA Challenge, a competition in the desert run by the government agency in charge of spurring innovation. Then we see Google’s investment in autonomous transportation, from the first little blob of a two-seat beach ball of a car, to the Prius and Lexus research vehicles, to today’s Jaguar iPace and on into the coming new, streamlined Waymo that we’ll see on streets soon.

There’s even a little button on a console that, if you hit it, you might get a code for a free ride in a Waymo. The Petersen is within the somewhat narrow corridor from Santa Monica to downtown Los Angeles where Waymo driverless shuttles operate. Go ahead, press it. You might get lucky.