The Petersen Automotive Museum is currently hosting “Totally Awesome”, a themed exhibition exploring car culture, design aesthetics, and pop culture from the 1980s and 1990s.
Visitors are treated to an array of rare, flamboyant and iconic vehicles—highlighting both classic production models and concept or limited-edition cars with dramatic styling and excess, such as vintage luxury coupes, rally homologation specials, and culture-infused brands.
Beyond automobiles themselves, the exhibition includes retro video game corners, neon lighting, mannequins styled in period fashion, and immersive sound and visual installations that invoke the sensory experience of those decades.
Standouts include vehicles like the 1984 Cadillac Seville by Gucci, the Toyota Sera, a Citroën BX 4TC, and an early McLaren F1—and even pop culture references like vehicles made famous by films or racing lore.
The exhibition’s design emphasizes both spectacle and careful curation—arranging cars and artifacts in ways that evoke nostalgia while also giving newer generations a lens into car culture’s evolution.
Museum spaces are transformed into dynamic environments where lighting, signage, audio, and interactive elements enhance the thematic impact—far from static displays.
For professionals in exhibition design, automotive history, and cultural studies, “Totally Awesome” offers rich lessons in audience engagement, thematic coherence, and integrating secondary media (games, music, fashion) alongside primary exhibits.
Exhibition Globe notes this type of exhibition as emblematic of how museums are pushing beyond pure artifact display into multi-sensorial, immersive experiences that bridge past and present.
