Last Call to See the 'People's Champ' Ken Block Exhibit in Los Angeles

October 5 is the last chance to see People's Champ, the Impact of Ken Block. The exhibit commemorating the late driving legend opened on February 15, 2025 at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. The influential car culture hub in downtown L.A. gives fans of Ken Block and motorsport a rare opportunity to see the vehicles he built for unrestrained driving action. 

This special engagement showcasing the automotive lifestyle innovator is brought to the public by 43i, the Forty Three Institute, and the Petersen museum. There you will find the cars he created explicitly for tire-shredding performance on video for millions of car enthusiasts. The exhibit highlights vehicles seen previously in his online media smash-hit Gymkhana films and other media shared widely across social channels. These machines include, of course, the automotive icon, Hoonicorn Mustang, a 1965 Ford Mustang RTR raucous rebuild. The 2016 Ford Focus RS RX, known as the 'train stunt' vehicle is also there, as well as others, including his Rally racers. 

Whether a Ken Block fan or completely unfamiliar with the sports genre he created, this exhibit is worth checking out. As a skater and a rally car racer, he invented a new sub-culture spectator sport. Combining the athletic styles of shredding on skateboard with the hardcore driving skills of rally car racing, he merged the two, making it stick with an uncanny acumen for disruptive marketing. This genre of motorsport was not the entrepreneur’s first invention. He had already co-founded the DC shoe brand, which was later picked up by Quicksilver. The shoe was a mother-of-invention: footwear designed to fit the then-unfulfilled needs of skate boarders like himself.

Perhaps his most endearing quality was his willingness to be a role model in a rough-and-tumble crowd. He kept it positive. He was about nurturing creativity and living a good life. His family founded the Forty Three Institute to reflect his mentoring spirit and help creative misfits like himself. 

This quote snippet sums it up:

“I guess my only legacy would be… at the end of the day, I try to inspire people to be creative and live a fun life.”

Adding, with a chuckle, “And don’t be an asshole.”