The cars in the Petersen Automotive Museum are full of stories

Cars have stories to tell. Here in the “vault” at the Petersen Automotive Museum, visitors can discover over 300 amazing vehicles and their tales.

There’s the first Ferrari, with a fire extinguisher on the passenger side (the car’s estimated worth: a cool $150 million). There’s also the armored Mercedes owned by Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos before his death. It can drop an oil slick and spew tear gas to foil pursuit.

“Not a bad place to pique an interest in cars,” says Olivia Thompson, standing among the curvaceous automobiles of the Roaring ’20s. She is one of the museum’s enthusiastic educators, ready to share her knowledge with novices and gearheads alike.

The area, as big as a city block, showcases the museum’s permanent collection – from Formula One race cars and colorful lowriders to historic limousines used by figures such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Nikita Khrushchev.

This spring, the vault added a Jaguar in British racing green once owned by Steve McQueen. The legendary 1960s actor had “way too much fun” racing around Los Angeles and almost had his license revoked, as Ms. Thompson tells it.

Visitors have their stories, too. Paolo Galardi, a hotelier in Argentina who owns 40 cars from the ’50s and ’60s, has visited car museums the world over. The Petersen vault “blows my mind,” he says.

For more visual storytelling that captures communities, traditions, and cultures around the globe, visit The World in Pictures.