A potted history of Japan’s car industry delights at the Petersen Museum

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  This Datsun Model 16 Coupe is actually a pre-war Japanese car. [credit: Jonathan Gitlin ]

LOS ANGELES-Like most nerds, I love spending time in a good museum. It doesn't matter if it's planes, video games, cars-even creationists. (OK, that last one wasn't good, per se.)

When it comes to good car museums, the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles is one of my favorites-right up there with the wonderful Lane Motor Museum in Nashville. Both have quite different foci. At the Lane you'll see more rear-engined Tatra sedans than you'd ever think possible outside of the Czech Republic or Slovakia, not to mention dozens and dozens of voiturettes and Kei cars. (Oh, and some Group B rally stuff.) Meanwhile, the Petersen often plays host to equally rarified but often much more expensive fare. At a conference I attended there last year, it was often hard to concentrate on the panelists and not the pristine Ferrari 250GTO that just sat there, a few feet away"

A recent trip to LA afforded some downtime, and how better to use it than a quick visit to this palace of vehicular delights? I caught the tail end of an exhibit called "The Roots of Monozukuri: Creative Spirit in Japanese Automaking," which opened last summer and runs until February 10. (Monozukuri is translated as "the art, science, and craft of making things.")

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