New Exhibition Explores the Evolving Idea of Luxury — Through Cars

Editor’s note: This article was sponsored by America’s Automotive Trust

Nearly every American teenager has a dream car they can’t possibly afford — mine was a 1969 Chevelle SS — and for many of us, cool cars are a lifelong passion. Even if you’ve left your teenage dream car in the rearview, admiring ultra expensive vehicles is a timeless pastime for many.

Now, LeMay – America’s Car Museum (ACM) is presenting those dream cars in “Rare & Luxurious: 100 Years of Exceptional Automobiles,” an exhibition that will last through the summer. If you don’t find your dream car in this exhibition, it might be because you aren’t dreaming big enough. I couldn’t afford that Chevelle when I was 16, and I still can’t afford it now. But it doesn’t even come close to qualifying for inclusion in “Rare & Luxurious.”

“You know, you can get into a 40- or 50-thousand-dollar car and be like, ‘Oh wow, this is really nice.’ But that Ferrari SP3 — you look at it and you’re just like, ‘This is from another world,’” says Jake Welk, marketing manager at ACM.

One of only two such cars on the West Coast, that Ferrari is worth about $4 million. But it’s not the only rare car in the exhibition. Welk says about half the cars in the exhibition belong to extremely limited series where only a few hundred, or even a couple dozen, were made.

“With this exhibit, we’re basically showing our guests cars that you’re probably not ever going to see anywhere else,” says Welk.

Just as the museum as a whole uses cars to tell stories of American history, this exhibition illustrates the way ideas about luxury have evolved in the last 100 years.

“People forget that the car was only invented a little over 100 years ago. That’s not very long,” says Welk. Some of the oldest cars in the museum look more like stagecoaches than automobiles. Before there was mass production, “The coach cars were built by hand. They were custom-built, they were hand-painted, the metal was bent by hand. Everything was very high-end,” says Welk.

At the beginning of the 100-year time period covered by this exhibition, the jury was still out on whether automobiles would catch on as a mainstream form of transportation or remain playthings for the rich and famous.

“In the early 1900s, you had Henry Ford building the Model T on an assembly line because he wanted to mass manufacture the car for an everyday driver. But then you had people like the Duesenberg brothers at the same time, and you had to really be a high roller to have one [of their cars],” says Welk. Today, it’s obvious that Ford’s approach won; there are few places in America where having a car is optional. But people who can afford it want the best, and quality materials and craftsmanship never go out of style.

Today, Mercedes AMG engines are built by hand by a single person. “A little plaque on the engine with their signature shows the owner this was built in Germany piece by piece. There’s thousands of parts in the engine and it was all built by hand. It’s stuff like that that really separates luxury from the cars that are mass manufactured for everyday driving,” says Welk.

Even if quality is timeless, tastes change. The exhibition traces the way ideas about luxury have changed with the times. Some people have always been attracted to speed.

“The Duesenberg was the fastest car in its time. In 1930 it could go 120 miles an hour, which was blazing fast back then,” says Welk. But for most elites, a Bentley was more their speed. “In the ’30s, you’d probably have a chauffeur driving you around, and you’d be in the back seat. So that car’s maybe not going to win a race on the track but instead focused on the experience of being in the car. Then in the ‘50s and ‘60s when racing took off, that’s when some of these groups really started to blend luxury with performance,” says Welk. European manufacturers like BMW and Alfa Romeo started breaking into the American market, and cars became sportier.

“As you get into the ‘80s and ‘90s, Lamborghini and Ferrari started to take off and became the standard. Now you’ve blended luxury with a big engine and a lot of performance,” says Welk.

To tell the story of this evolution, the exhibit cherry picks vehicles from among the museum’s collection, pulling cars from their garage-like parking spaces on the lower floors and showing them off in the natural light of the top floor gallery with enough space to walk all the way around each vehicle.

“A handful of these cars have been tucked away on the lower floors. Now they’re up in the Showcase Gallery where it opens a new perspective because visitors can see parts of the vehicle they’ve never seen before,” says Welk.

These stars of the museum’s own collection are joined by about a dozen rare cars on loan from other collections. Besides that $4 million Ferrari, there’s a 1986 Lamborghini Countach and an authentic Shelby Daytona.

“These are seven-figure vehicles, highly sought-after even with big-time collectors.” Cars like these are too rare for most collectors to obtain, no matter how much they’re willing to spend. Just getting to see one is a dream come true for many.

“When we loaded the Shelby Daytona off the truck and brought it into the museum it was the first time I’d ever seen one in person,” says Welk. But the Shelby is not his favorite car in the exhibition.

“That Lamborghini Countach is probably my favorite. It’s red. It’s very ‘80s-looking and has butterfly doors that go up in the air. I had a poster when I was a kid of a Countach; to me it always felt like a movie car. There’s just nothing else that really looks like it. So, to me, to be working here and seeing one in the exhibit, it’s a pretty cool thing.”

Kids today might not understand the appeal that its squarish 1980s aesthetic has for their parents, but it’s not all history in this exhibition. A couple of cars represent the absolute cutting edge of modern, high-tech luxury.

“The Ferrari SP3 and the Lamborghini Huracan that we have are both 2024s. So those are extremely current in terms of what performance and exotic cars look like right now,” says Welk.

At this exhibit parents can finally see their childhood dream car in person, and kids can discover theirs.