Petersen Museum feels The Porsche Effect
70 years of cool Porsches will be stuffed into the Petersen Museum for The Porsche Effect, a new exhibit opening Feb. 3. This is a 550 Spyder.

Porsches are cool. I think we can all agree on that, right? Those who have driven them, those who are lucky enough to own one, can attest to their remarkable roadholding, perfect balance and powerful engines. The rest of us can at least say that they look beautiful. Why do we all love them? Who can say? We just do.

So seeing 50 of the coolest of the cool all together in one big gallery would perhaps be cause enough for swooning, or at least shortness of breath. The Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles will host a new exhibit called, “The Porsche Effect,” opening to the public Feb. 3, and you should book your flights to LA now.

Porsche Effect 2
Some more of the Porsches that make up The Porsche Effect at the Petersen. Here's Steve McQueen's 356 Speedster.

“We are looking forward to sharing the story of Porsche through rare and seldom-seen artifacts and display elements, in addition to some of the most iconic cars of all time,” said Klaus Zellmer, president and CEO of Porsche Cars North America.

PCNA and the Petersen have been working on the exhibit for over a year. It took that long to get all these great Porsches together. There will be classics like you see in the above gallery: a 550 Spyder, the Jagermeister 962, a Gulf-liveried 917K and a modern 919. But there will also be “seldom-seen” cars: the 1938 Berlin-Rome Type 64 race car, a 906, the Petersen’s own 901, an X83 Turbo S Flachbau 964, a rally-spec Type 953 911 and Bruce Meyer’s own 935 K3 Le Mans winner. There are even two 928s: the 928 H50 study and a four-door prototype 928, which we saw in Weissach last summer.

If you can’t wait till Feb. 3, you may still be able to purchase tickets to the VIP reception Feb. 1 that will include a panel discussion moderated by Tommy Kendall and featuring Hurley Haywood, Patrick Dempsey and Spike Feresten. And visit the Petersen's web page to see an inspiring video of a 1977 Porsche 936/77 lapping Le Mans. That’s free.

Headshot of Mark Vaughn
Mark Vaughn
Mark Vaughn grew up in a Ford family and spent many hours holding a trouble light over a straight-six miraculously fed by a single-barrel carburetor while his father cursed Ford, all its products and everyone who ever worked there. This was his introduction to objective automotive criticism. He started writing for City News Service in Los Angeles, then moved to Europe and became editor of a car magazine called, creatively, Auto. He decided Auto should cover Formula 1, sports prototypes and touring cars—no one stopped him! From there he interviewed with Autoweek at the 1989 Frankfurt motor show and has been with us ever since.