25. March 2025
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Museums & Exhibitions

San Diego Automotive Museum

Florian Buechtingby Florian Buechting

San Diego Automotive Museum

16.50 EUR
San Diego Automotive Museum
4.3

Rating

 4.3/5

Flyctory.com Pros

  • Nice collection of cars and motorcycles
  • Very nice presentation
  • Good souvenir store

Flyctory.com Cons

  • Relatively small museum

Balboa Park in San Diego hosts numerous attractions. The most famous one is likely the San Diego Zoo, which I visited before the Flyctory.com days already. So far, I just have taken you to the – rather average – Comic-Con Museum. Time to add another place I visited there. A rather small place in the park is the San Diego Automotive Museum, Let’s have a look inside together.

 

San Diego Automotive Museum – Location & Admission

The San Diego Automotive Museum is located in the rather Southern part of Balboa park. You can walk to practically all Balboa Park attractions from there. The closest attractions around are the Comic-Con Museum, the San Diego Air & Space Museum and the Starlight Bowl stage as well as the Marie Hitchcock Puppet Theatre. You can easily get there by car (if you are early enough on peak times, as the area is popular). Balboa Park features multiple free parking lots. The museum is located in one of the historic buildings of the park, which has been renovated for tat purpose and opened in 1988.

The museum is closed on Mondays. In summer, Tuesday to Thursday opening times are 10:00 to 16:30, while the museum is opening one hour earlier Friday to Sunday. Adult admission is 16.50 USD, residents are free on Tuesdays. However, if you are visiting the park, I highly recommend to go for the Balboa Park Explorer Pass. Any four Balboa Park museums (the Zoo and Comic-Con Museum are not part of it) on one day are 56 USD (adult). The Parkwide Pass for 67 USD (adult) is a great deal, including all participating places within seven days. You should, however, at least plan two to three days for all of them.

 

San Diego Automotive Museum – The Visit

The museum has a roughly 1600 square meter space. It is an automotive, not an automobile museum and thus contains cars and motorcycles. There are roughly 75 vehicles in exhibition. They are typically well-documented in English, some of them coming with a QR code for additional information. The museum is thus comparably small, but it has a nice variety of items. During our visit in December 2023, there were for example themed exhibitions about vehicles of the San Diego Troops or Indian Motorcycles.

Despite we visited Balboa Park in the peak season between Christmas and New Year, the atmosphere in the museum was very relaxed and it was not too packed. There was sufficient time and no pressure to explore the exhibits. You, of course, cannot touch or enter the cars. The exception is a DMC DeLorean, in which you may sit and take a photo. As you see in the pictures, the presentation is really nice. The vehicles in the San Diego Automotive Museum cover a wide range of transportation history, from a 1905 REO Runabout to the 2016 Kawasaki Ninja H2R. I also liked the Don Prudhomme exhibition you see below. It took us some 45 minutes visiting the museum.

 

San Diego Automotive Museum – Services

The staff at the museum was very kind and helpful. There is free WiFi throughout Balboa Park. I really liked the museum’s souvenir shop, which had some really funny items in stock and might add some action on your credit card.

 

San Diego Automotive Museum – My View

Visiting San Diego Automotive Museum is fun. If you are at Balboa Park anyway, I would definitely put it on your list. The museum is not too large, but it is well-done and the visit does not take overwhelming long, so that you have sufficient time for other park attractions as well.

 

Flyctory.com in San Diego

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