Bugatti (photo: Andre Ritzinger, creative commons license)

Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts is hosting an exhibit on many Americans’ (mine!) favorite items of unrepentant and innocent lust: “Sculpted in Steel: Art Deco Automobiles and Motorcycles, 1929-1940,” on view until May 30 (vimeo gallery tour).

(Houston MFAH)

The iconic motor cars and cycles developed during that decade embody design that “dazzles in vehicles from the United States and around the world” and puts to shame the boring, all-the-same cars of recent decades. Yes, anyone with a sense of automotive history or who remembers pix of their grandparents’ cars can immediately spot a 1957 Chevy—fins!—or the starry rear end of a 1959 Pontiac, but the cars of the 1990s and 2000s?

In Katherine Allen’s January 2016 article about the exhibit in Metropolis, “The Age of Decadent Driving,” she points out that the exhibit’s cars’ Art Deco sensibility was not created by post-WWI machine technology, but “painstakingly created by artisans,” infusing everything “from the hood ornaments to the instrument panels.”

Stout Scarab (photo: Dave, creative commons license)

See the Stout Scarab and cheer!

(P.S., the fantastic cars are just one reason to love Hulu’s production of 11.22.63. Jake Epping himself drives a sexy 1958 yellow Ford Fairlane convertible.)