Widely considered the premier car museum in the United States, the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles boasts a world-class collection of vehicles while also devoting space to presenting the impact of the automobile on the culture and infrastructure of Southern California. Classic production models, racing cars, vintage motorcycles, and concept vehicles populate the museum’s four floors. Of course, no Los Angeles–based car museum would be complete without a collection of famous cars from television and film, which are also represented.

About fifty miles northwest, legendary private collector Peter Mullin has created a stunning museum, decorated like a Paris salon, celebrating the vehicles influenced by the sleek, streamlined styling of the art deco movement of the 1920s and ’30s. The collection includes automobiles ranging from the storied 1936 Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic to the 1938 Talbot Lago T150 SS and a stunning Delahaye T165 from 1939. Widely considered to have some of the most elegant cars ever built, the collection evokes a bygone era when bespoke coachwork was as integral to a car’s creation as was its engine.