Our IJF Festivities this year included a private JOC tour of The Vault at the Petersen Automotive Museum.
This event was sponsored by Heacock Collector Car Insurance and yours truly.
The event was well attended with two groups of 35 taking the tour followed by dinner and cocktails at Drago, the restaurant inside of the museum. Appropriately for Halloween, Mark Mayuga and Judy Graven provided Marti Gras masks for all of the participants! The Vault at the Petersen is not always accessible to the public, but is well known for the cars that are thought to be contained within. A few noteworthy cars includes movie cars like the Porsche 928 from Tom Cruise’s 1980’s film Risky Business, Kenicke’s ’48 Ford Deluxe from the movie Grease and Magnum PI’s Ferrari 308 GTSi. There were also super cars including a McLaren P1, Ferrari GTO and ex-Michael Schumacher F-1 race car.
For us Jaguar aficionados, the Vault holds ex-Steve McQueen Jaguar XK-SS, a 1994 Jaguar XJ220 (it actually went 219) and the very first leaper, a 1937 S.S. 100. But it’s the stories about the cars that make a visit to the Vault a treat. Our docent Jim told us that McQueen was known to drive Mulholland late at night in the Jag at high speed. The CHP Sargent offered dinner at Lawry’s for the officer who caught him. Mind you, this was a time when the police were driving Plymouth Furys. Dinner was never claimed! A special thanks to Mark Mayuga and the IJF Committee for envisioning such a great event and making it a reality!