When Disneyland first opened its doors in 1955, its namesake provided a simple mission: “Here age relives fond memories of the past, and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future.” Perhaps no original attraction better encapsulated that ideal than Tomorrowland’s Autopia, which offered adult parkgoers a childlike feeling of discovery while providing many young “drivers” their first taste of driving themselves. Two decades after its opening, a young boy named Peter Menotti grabbed the steering wheel for the first time, took off down the track, and fell in love.
“At the end of the track there’s the turn to the backstage area,” Menotti, now in his mid-50s, remembers, “and I always said one day it’s gonna be open and I’m gonna drive right off the track and all the way to Burbank and take a car home with me.”
That’s not exactly how it worked out. For one, Menotti lives in Westchester these days, near Los Angeles International Airport. For another, his Disneyland Autopia Mark VII wasn’t driven here, and it certainly didn’t look like this.
“By chance, I saw one on eBay in 2001 from Hollywood Trading Company, and I went down there with my truck,” Menotti says. “They had stacks of ’em. Somebody didn’t treat them right. I picked the best one of the bunch.”
In 1998, Disneyland cleaned out some of its warehouses and decided the 180 old Autopia car bodies had to go. The park had recently entered into a new sponsorship deal
