"La Vida Lowrider: Cruising the City of Angels"

THE PETERSEN AUTOMOTIVE MUSEUM is not, it must be said, a very controversial place. With its mission to "explore and present the history of the automobile" in the most car-centric city in the world, it might as well be the Newcastle Museum of Coal. But with the new exhibit "La Vida Lowrider: Cruising the City of Angels," the Petersen drops a splendid argument in favor of openness and acceptance right in the middle of America's immigration debate.

Born of Mexican pride and defiance after World War II, lowriding -- a customizing trend in which cars are lowered onto their suspensions, reupholstered and extravagantly painted -- has become a quintessentially American tradition, embraced by African Americans as well as white kids. It's also become one of the country's sexiest cultural exports. Top-tier lowriders can sell to Japanese collectors for six figures; you can see teenagers wandering around Tokyo's Roppongi district in baggy jeans and Virgen de Guadalupe T-shirts. In design and graphics, lowriding style has become the Hispanic equivalent of manga.

The Petersen exhibit -- 21 cars, two motorcycles and a collection of raked, gold-plated custom bicycles -- offers a brisk summary of lowriding from its beginnings in East L.A., as a kind of automotive extension of zoot-suiting and pachucos fashion; through the '60s and '70s, when the low and slow (bajito y suavecito) style can be read as a reaction to white auto enthusiasts' hot rodding; to the present, when it is a multibillion-dollar hobby and industry with its own bible, Lowrider Magazine. Like hip-hop's profusion into the larger world of pop music, the lowriding aesthetic -- the iridescent "candy" paints, the filled seams and shaved door handles, the ground-hugging ride height -- has changed the dynamic of mainstream car design. The Chevy HHR, for example, is essentially a mass-market lowrider.

'LA VIDA LOWRIDER: CRUISING THE CITY OF ANGELS'

WHERE: Petersen Automotive Museum, 6060 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.

WHEN: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays; ends June 8

PRICE: $10; $3, ages 5 to 12; $6, parking

INFO: (323) 930-2277, www.petersen.org