With 2,448 miles winding through rolling hills, cornfields, high desert and cityscapes, Route 66 offers unparalleled access to America’s past and present. Of course, Angelenos can always journey a short stretch of the Mother Road without ever leaving their hometown – just ramble down Santa Monica Boulevard. But if you really want to feel the freedom of the Main Street of America – short of packing up and driving the whole road – there’s no better place than L.A.’s own Petersen Automotive Museum.

(photo by Tabor Brewster)

It’s hard to miss this mecca of motor works on the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax, a chunky crimson chassis wrapped in an undulating steel roll-cage. You’d be forgiven for thinking it’s some kind of space-age power plant, one giant engine huffing and puffing as thousands of chrome gears grind away at pillar-sized pistons somewhere deep within.

But once inside the museum, you’ll find an encyclopedic collection of automobiles, spanning early motor wagons to futuristic prototypes. Here, the cars speak for themselves. Each tells its own story through the miles collected beneath the wheels. Zoom in on the Petersen’s American cars – the Camaros, Mustangs, T-Birds, Corvettes and Model Ts – and you’ll find the enduring symbols of Route 66.

For museum curator and chief historian Leslie Kendall, those American classics are more than just shiny pieces of nostalgia from the Mother Road’s heyday. They’re chrome-trimmed windows into the freedom the highway offered.

“In America, you’re sitting behind a desk all day, or if you’re a housewife in the ‘50s and ‘60s, you’re stuck at home behind a vacuum cleaner,” Kendall said. “You feel powerless, but you get in your car and you’ve got this two-ton chunk of metal that you control for however briefly.”

Even in short bursts, those gasoline-fueled adventures down Route 66 put Americans behind the wheel of their lives.

“You’re in charge of how you accelerate, where you go, who you take with you, the music you’re listening to on the way, the temperature of the car – if you happen to have air conditioning – or just open your wing vents,” Kendall said. “You have all these choices you can make. It’s about freedom, and Route 66 exemplified freedom, exemplified getting away from it all, and going to California.”

Route 66 – officially designated in 1926 by stitching together a patchwork of different roads – was born out of necessity. Americans, now driving automobiles like never before, needed highways that could carry them farther. Route 66 could do just that.

One vehicle in the Petersen’s collection defined this era of transportation more than any other.

“I think you have to start with the Model T,” museum curator and automotive specialist Jonathan Eisen said. “The car that put America on wheels.”

Ford Model T

While not the first automobile, the Ford Model T was the first car that many Americans drove, mostly for one reason: they could afford it. Cheap, reliable, large and mass-produced, Henry Ford’s “Tin Lizzies” sold more than 15 million units between 1908 and 1927. As the Depression plunged the nation into despair and the Dust Bowl smothered the Great Plains, hundreds of thousands of farmers and their families would pack up and Go West – sometimes in a Ford Model T rolling down Route 66.

“When you think about the Dust Bowl migration, you think of Model Ts in all sorts of configurations,” Eisen said.

The Model T, Kendall added, was an ideal Route 66 vehicle that drivers could “strap luggage onto, drive away and easily fix on the side of the desert road.”

With a top speed of just 40 mph at the time Route 66 was designated, traversing the full route in a Model T would have proved an odyssey. But at just $440 ($10,400 in today’s economy) the Ford Model T paved the way for the American automobile.

The Ford Model T made driving a car affordable. (photo by Tabor Brewster)

1947 Oldsmobile

By 1938, Route 66 was fully paved, offering a smoother, easier ride as driving became commonplace. During World War II, the highway was a major thoroughfare for service members and laborers. Following the war, the purpose of the highway shifted. Instead of traveling primarily out of necessity, Americans began to travel for pleasure in greater numbers. Route 66 was now a gateway to vacation.

“It democratized travel,” Eisen said. “Air travel was very expensive. It was ordinary people driving ordinary vehicles, fixing them themselves and often camping in the car itself. That’s what made it great, and that’s what made it so important. It was something for the regular family to use.”

While Route 66 later became mythologized through cherry red hot rods and explosive motorcycles, the 1947 Oldsmobile was perhaps a better representation of its middle-of-the-road ethos, Kendall said. A regular car for regular people wanting to explore the country.

“It’s ordinary, and that’s the reason we have it, because it’s not anything people would normally look at,” Kendall said. “Every car back in the day was not flashy and superb in every way. Sometimes they were just ordinary.”

Bulky, spacious and simple, the car wouldn’t necessarily stand out in a lineup of classics, but its place in the Petersen preserves the everyday history of Route 66 beyond the flashy colors and bright neon lights.

“We collect the typical as well as the rare, because who else is going to?” Kendall said.

1957 Chevy

Following World War II, the country saw an unprecedented economic boom and widespread prosperity. By the 1950s, car ownership soared and road trips became more popular than ever before.

“All these companies came up with different ways to make the long road trip more comfortable, more interesting,” Eisen said. “Things like air conditioning came out of a long road trip. Stereos, all sorts of things just to make the ride more comfortable.”

“You were kind of living in your car,” Kendall added. “It was your living room, and you kind of steered your living room down the road.”

With the road trip becoming a more desirable vacation, Americans flocked to Route 66 in droves.

“The road became one long community,” Eisen said. “It was like the longest small town in America.”

The highway transformed into a destination in its own right, dotted with wigwam motels, fiberglass dinosaurs and drive-in diners blaring Elvis on the jukebox.

“Drivers are going faster and faster, and you had to capture their attention more quickly,” Kendall said. “Fifty miles an hour, 55 may seem slow enough to put the top down, but when you’re driving by a hotel, that’s a fast clip.”

The result was brighter colors, more vibrant neon signs and unusual roadside attractions.

“When you saw a row of teepees, it was like, ‘What? I can stay in a teepee? Honey, let’s stop here,’” Kendall said.

And the cars, Kendall added, were just as unique as the road. In the 1950s, automobiles became a statement.

“It was normal middle-class people driving these long road trips, and so a way to make yourself feel a little bit more exclusive was having a car with lots of chrome, having a car with a bright color,” Eisen said. “It’s the opposite of today. Now today you want a car subdued, kind of restrained, and that’s how you show class. But back then it was, ‘I want to show off. I want my car to be shiny and brightly colored.’”

“Look at me! I made it,” Kendall exclaimed.

Within the Petersen’s Vault, look no further than the mint-green ‘57 Chevy. With the top down, you can almost smell the burning rubber as the tail-finned convertible peels out of a drive-in theater, its whitewall tires kicking up dust, hood rockets piercing the night as neon signs dance across the chrome bumpers and it disappears down Route 66.

1957 Chevy (photo by Tabor Brewster)

1959 Eldorado Biarritz

Waiting at the end of Route 66 was the California dream. Throughout each era, from desperation to leisure, the idea of opportunity awaited travelers headed west. Whether real or mythologized, California, with its palm trees, movie studios and endless sunshine, represented something greater.

“People don’t say from L.A. to Chicago. They say from Chicago to L.A.,” Kendall noted, emphasizing the westward momentum of Route 66.

The museum curators pointed out that in the Golden Age of Hollywood, cars became a status symbol.

“Movie star cars were very famous,” Eisen said. “They were very elegant. They were enormous. They were exclusive.”

“In New York, you walk up and down the street with expensive handbags and expensive outerwear,” Kendall said. “In L.A., forget it. Nobody’s going to look at your handbag. They’re going to look at the car you drove up in and whether or not the valet is going to leave it in front of the restaurant or park it behind.”

Your car, Kendall said, became your “outermost layer of clothing.”

The two curators quickly agreed on which car in the Petersen’s collection best represents Route 66’s western terminus and its dazzling car culture – a lipstick red Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz.

“It’s flashy as Hollywood. It’s Beverly Hills. It’s rich. ‘Look at me. I’ve got towering fins.’ Santa Monica, you’re at the ocean – put the top down,” Kendall said. “That’s kind of the archetypical L.A. car.”

If the ’57 Chevy was the stylish car for the average American, then the Eldorado Biarritz was the spaceship for the stars. Taller tailfins, two rocket-shaped taillights and a 390-cubic-inch V8 engine meant true excess – Route 66 at its most glamorous.

Driving a Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz was a status symbol. (photo by Tabor Brewster)

1966 Ford Thunderbird

By the 1980s, the Interstate Highway System had effectively supplanted Route 66, and in 1985 the route was officially decommissioned.

“There was a real shift when we went to the national highway system because that’s a totally different experience,” Eisen said. “Route 66 was one long community, whereas the big highways, they’re walled in, and you don’t see the environment anymore. It’s just about getting across the country as fast as possible, and it really changed the attitude of what a road trip is, and changed driving and changed cars.”

Cars became more subdued – muted colors and sleek designs that were less flashy and more utilitarian.

“Boomers loved their ‘57 Chevys, their tail fins and chrome, and so their kids were like, ‘I don’t want to look like my parents. I want a gray minivan.’ And then the gray minivan became a black SUV,” Eisen said.

But a peculiar thing happened with the decommissioning of Route 66. Once it no longer officially existed, it crept its way back into pop culture, this time through memories of childhood road trips, dusty photo albums and abandoned roadside attractions.

“Route 66 became a ‘what’s that?’” Kendall said. “It became an old thing, and old has a way of becoming venerable. There’s a generational blind spot for things, a generational blind spot for cars. Once a car hits 30 or 40 years old, all of a sudden it’s not junk anymore. All of a sudden, it’s a well-remembered relic of your past. And same with the road.”

“It takes something being gone for you to realize what you’ve lost,” Eisen added.

A wave of nostalgia, amplified by film and television, has powered Route 66 back into the American imagination as the perfect backdrop for the cross-country road trip – a myth of yesteryear’s adventures. Films like “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure,” “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” “Rain Man” and “Cars” either take place on the road or were filmed on it, exposing generations of filmgoers to the Mother Road. “Thelma and Louise,” while not explicitly set on Route 66, takes its titular duo on an “archetypal road trip” across the Southwest, Kendall said, in an iconic 1966 Ford Thunderbird that now sits in the Petersen Museum.

“That’s a perfect car. Turquoise against the red of the desert,” Kendall added.

The Petersen also displays several other cars from films inspired by Route 66, including the yellow Volkswagen van from “Little Miss Sunshine” and a replica of Lightning McQueen.

For 100 years, Route 66 has shaped the way Americans drive.

“The reason why there’s such a contrast between American cars and European cars is because we had wide open roads, long roads,” Eisen said. “We took long road trips, so we could accommodate big cars, cars with soft suspensions that were comfortable driving for hours on end.”

“In America, roads were built around cars. In Europe, cars were built around roads,” Kendall said.

The “Thelma and Louise” 1966 Ford Thunderbird is “a perfect car,” according to Leslie Kendall, curator at the Petersen Museum. (photo courtesy of fordAuthority.com)

Route 66 – the longest small town in America – represented freedom, opportunity, dreams and myths. The cars of Route 66 tell the story of hardship, necessity, convenience and luxury. To this day, Route 66 invites possibilities and the quintessential American question, “Where can I go next?” Though it may be slower than the interstate, with more bumps and detours, the Mother Road offers something that the faster route can’t – the chance, as Kendall put it:

“to make your way through America instead of bypassing America.”