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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