Petersen Museum Selling Off 1/3rd Of Collection

TTAC Staff
by TTAC Staff

Starting back in March, the Petersen Museum in Los Angeles started to quietly sell off parts of its ~400 car collection. When a lot of more than 100 cars was announced to go on the block at Auctions America’s Aug. 1 sale in Burbank, California, it caught the attention of collectors and curators across the world of collector cars, and the museum made a public announcement to the Los Angeles Times this week that the sales are to raise money to renovate and reconfigure the museum. Also announced was the fact that the museum, which was originally endowed by Robert Petersen, who founded an enthusiast magazine empire including Hot Rod and Motor Trend, and Peterson’s wife Margie, would be changing its focus to include more motorcycles and prewar French cars from the Art Deco period.

The museum says that many of the cars they are selling are duplicates or not suitable for public display, critics, though, aren’t happy with the changes and say that the changes reflect the personal tastes of Executive Director Terry Karges, who owns Champions Moto, a motorcycle company, and new museum board Chairman Peter Mullin, whose own museum in Oxnard, CA is one of the world’s finest collections of Bugattis and other French classics.

“The idea was to breathe some life into the museum,” Karges told the LA Times. “We want to be a world-class automotive museum. We want to become an art museum featuring rolling sculpture and tell stories about the art of speed and the art of design.” Karges described the vehicles being sold as either surplus or cars that could easily be borrowed if needed for an exhibit. Others were characterized as not exhibit-quality vehicles that would be expensive to restore and were just taking up space in the museum’s crowded “vault” in the building’s basement.

Former employees, though, say that the changes are not consistent with the museum’s mission statement: “to present the history of the automobile and its impact on American life and culture using Los Angeles as the prime example.”

“They have sold a lot of wonderful cars that Bob Petersen was very fond of,” said Buddy Pepp, who retired last year and was replaced by Karges.

The Petersen sold 12 cars for a combined $8.5 million at Gooding & Co.’s Amelia Island Auction in March. They included a 1995 Ferrari F50 that went for $1.375 million, a 2006 Bugatti Veyron (the first sold in the U.S.) that brought $924,000, and a 1990 Ferrari F40 that fetched $715,000.

The August auction in Burbank will include the 1963 VW Beetle that starred as Herbie in the 1968 Disney movie, The Love Bug. More distressing to some of the critics are the hot rods being sold, saying that the museum is walking away from California’s hot rod culture at the heart of the mission statement. A ’32 Ford highboy that did 142.97 at Bonneville in 1954, and a Boyd Coddington built ’33 Ford Custom Victoria are among the cars for sale.

While the sale may distress some enthusiasts, it’s also an opportunity for serious collectors to buy significant cars that have the provenance of one of the world’s great car collections, something that doesn’t happen very often.

TTAC Staff
TTAC Staff

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  • Lorenzo Lorenzo on Jul 19, 2013

    You should be more careful choosing those pictures for articles. I thought they were selling Herbie! But seriously, folks, this is why the rich need to be very careful of their endowments to organizations. Chances are, Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller would be aghast at what the directors of their foundations are financing. Joan Kroc, widow of McDonald's chairman Ray Kroc, chose to leave a modest amount to a foundation, and liquidated the rest of Ray's fortune with bequests in her will. It took executors over two years to sell off the assets and give away over $3 billion to charities, and Joan had already given away nearly $1 billion while she was alive. It's a bit different with collections, but eventually, there will be directors who have no faith in what the collector/donor wanted.

  • Porschespeed Porschespeed on Aug 24, 2013

    So the Peterson dumped some stuff that was rote and not terribly interesting to car people. This is news why?

  • AZFelix Hilux technical, preferably with a swivel mount.
  • ToolGuy This is the kind of thing you get when you give people faster internet.
  • ToolGuy North America is already the greatest country on the planet, and I have learned to be careful about what I wish for in terms of making changes. I mean, if Greenland wants to buy JDM vehicles, isn't that for the Danes to decide?
  • ToolGuy Once again my home did not catch on fire and my fire extinguisher(s) stayed in the closet, unused. I guess I threw my money away on fire extinguishers.(And by fire extinguishers I mean nuclear missiles.)
  • Carson D The UAW has succeeded in organizing a US VW plant before. There's a reason they don't teach history in the schools any longer. People wouldn't make the same mistakes.
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