The Best Roads to Drive Near Los Angeles, and Which Car Belongs on Each
Los Angeles has a reputation for traffic and a secret cache of some of the best driving roads in the country, often within forty minutes of each other. Angeles Crest Highway is the best pure driving road near the city; the Pacific Coast Highway past Trancas is the best morning in an open car; Latigo Canyon is the connoisseur’s climb and Decker is its meaner sibling. The trick is knowing which to drive and at what hour: leave at seven, be at Point Mugu by a quarter past eight, and treat every blind canyon apex as if a cyclist is over the crown. Mulholland Drive is not a driving road; Mulholland Highway is.
| Road | Figure | What it rewards, and the wrong tool |
|---|---|---|
| Angeles Crest Highway, CA-2 | ~7,900 ft | Well-sighted sweepers, mile after mile. Rewards pace; check closures first. Wrong tool: anything that needs fuel in the next fifty miles. |
| PCH, Santa Monica to Point Mugu | 40 mi | An open roof and low speeds. Wrong tool: anything you booked for outright pace. |
| Latigo Canyon | 10 mi of switchbacks | A short, balanced car. Wrong tool: a wide SUV. |
| Decker Canyon, CA-23 | 7 mi, very tight | The narrowest road here by some margin: the Boxster’s road, with the Urus and the G 63 on the PCH, where their width costs nothing. |
| Ortega Highway, CA-74 | 25 mi | A proper mountain road with truck traffic and a bad crash record. Weekday mornings only. |
| Palos Verdes Drive | 25 mi loop | Ocean beside you, Catalina on the horizon. Cruise it; do not attack it. |
Mulholland: the Drive and the Highway are two different roads
People conflate them constantly. Mulholland Drive is beautiful and it is not a driving road; Mulholland Highway, twenty miles west, is a genuinely different animal.
The Drive runs along the ridge from Cahuenga Pass west to Encino, past the overlooks, with the Valley on one side and the basin on the other: 35 mph limits, speed humps outside houses, blind crests, parked tourists, and a sheriff who knows exactly where the straight bits are. Go for the view at dusk and drive it like the residential street it is.
West of Encino the pavement stops — Dirt Mulholland is closed to cars — and picks up again as Mulholland Highway out in the Santa Monica Mountains, running down to the coast near Leo Carrillo. The famous section is the set of switchbacks near Cornell Road by the Rock Store, which is why every car magazine you have ever seen has photographed something there, and why on a Sunday morning it is full of people photographing.
Pacific Coast Highway: Santa Monica to Point Mugu
Roughly forty miles of CA-1, and the single most photographed drive in California for a reason. The first stretch through Malibu is 45 mph, heavily enforced, and clogged from mid-morning onwards at weekends — Sunset to Cross Creek can take half an hour on its own on a Saturday. The good part starts past Trancas: traffic thins, the road opens, and you get Leo Carrillo, County Line and finally Mugu Rock, where the highway is cut into the cliff with the Pacific directly below.
That is the postcard. Leave at seven, be at Point Mugu by a quarter past eight, turn round before the world wakes up, and read the marine forecast the night before, because the pretty version is a two-hour window. What each of the coast runs measures, from Malibu to Big Sur, is its own page.
Angeles Crest and the Malibu canyons
Angeles Crest Highway is the best pure driving road near the city, starting in La Cañada Flintridge twenty-five minutes from downtown. CA-2 climbs out of the basin and keeps climbing, to nearly 7,900 feet near Dawson Saddle, through mile after mile of well-sighted, sweeping mountain corners; it is the one road here where a fast car gets to be a fast car.
The cautions are real: the high section closes for snow and storm damage, sometimes for months, with gates that are not always where you expect — Caltrans QuickMap is the live closure map, and it is the one link on this page to open before you set off — and there is effectively nowhere to buy fuel once you leave La Cañada.
Latigo Canyon Road is the connoisseur’s choice: it leaves PCH near Latigo Beach and climbs about ten miles of near-continuous switchbacks to Kanan Dume, and the descent back toward the ocean opens the Pacific between corners in a way that is worth the entire drive. Decker Canyon, CA-23, is Latigo’s meaner sibling — it leaves near Trancas and goes almost straight up in a series of extremely tight, steep turns, and it is the narrowest road on this list by some margin.
Decker is a road for a narrow car; the Urus and the G 63 are better spent on the coast road, where their width costs nothing. Both run through the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, which posts fire and road-condition notices for the whole range, and a great deal of what looks like open shoulder up there is somebody’s land or a drop.
Two hazards that never make the highlight reel
Sand and gravel across the apexes, particularly after rain, on roads where you cannot see far enough ahead to plan round it. Treat every blind corner as though a cyclist, a fallen rock or an oncoming car is over the crown, because sooner or later one is. Almost nothing at this end of the market carries a spare, and a cut sidewall on Latigo ends the morning where it happens. In your own car the fix is a fitter who comes to it, and West Coast Tire runs a mobile service out of West Los Angeles; in ours it is a phone call to us rather than a problem you own.
The road you are on is not the road you were told about. Ortega Highway, CA-74, is a proper mountain road with fast sweepers and tight sections, and it carries commuter and truck traffic, has a bad crash record, and is a weekday-morning road or not at all. Palos Verdes Drive is the opposite: a twenty-five-mile loop with the ocean beside you and Catalina on the horizon, low limits, real enforcement, and a road you cruise roof-down rather than attack.
Which car for which road
PCH rewards an open roof and low speeds, so the Boxster, the Corvette Convertible, a 430i or the Huracán Spider, and not anything you booked for outright pace. Angeles Crest rewards pace and sight lines: the Corvette, the Huracán, the 911, the AMG GT 43, with a full tank from La Cañada.
Latigo rewards a short, balanced car — the Boxster, the Cayman, the RS3, which drives all four wheels and forgives a damp morning — and Decker punishes width, so the Urus, the G-Classes and the Range Rovers stay on the coast road. Palos Verdes is a Dawn or a 430i with the roof down. Which colour Corvette and which roof are settled in the Corvette colour guide.
A day trip is a destination with a good road attached: Santa Barbara is two hours up the coast and has its own page; Palm Springs is two hours east on the 10 and the last half hour of open desert is what the car is for, and so does that. A weekend is Joshua Tree at two and a half hours, or Big Sur at five hours to the good part, worth it only with two nights because the point of Big Sur is stopping.
The Las Vegas run is four hours on the 15 with one thing attached: we rent the car here and you bring it back here, there is no one-way drop in Nevada, and we ask for notice before the rental starts so the trip is on the agreement and the mileage is planned — the allowance is per car, and shorter on the exotics. The Vegas rules and what a day’s allowance covers each have their own page.
What it costs, and how it reaches you
A road-trip booking is where the daily rate stops mattering as much: the quote takes whichever combination of day, five-day and twenty-one-day blocks costs least across your dates, and every rental carries a daily mileage allowance settled once when the car comes back, with the per-mile charge past it printed on the agreement — ask for both figures with the dates. Deposits are refundable holds by the car, back 5–7 business days after it returns, with cover priced per day off the band.
Collection from our lot on Robertson Boulevard is free and delivery to the partner hotels in Beverly Hills is complimentary; the airport is $150 both ways standard, where the car waits in the airport parking structure and you take the shuttle out to it, or $300 both ways VIP at the terminal, half that for one direction. Interstate rules and the rest are in the terms, and every car above sits on the sports car rental page for Los Angeles.
The short version
Angeles Crest for pace, PCH past Trancas for the roof, Latigo for the connoisseur, Decker only in something narrow. Mulholland Drive is a view; Mulholland Highway is a road. Leave at seven, treat every blind apex as occupied, and open QuickMap before the Crest.
The Boxster is the car for most of it, the Corvette or a Huracán for the Crest, the RS3 for a damp morning, and the wide cars stay on the coast. They sit with every sports car we rent with their calendars.
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Frequently asked questions
What is the best driving road near Los Angeles?
Nizo Luxury rents the cars for it — +1 (424) 303-6496; a Porsche Boxster is $286 a day. The road is Angeles Crest Highway, CA-2, for pure driving: it climbs from La Cañada Flintridge to nearly 7,900 feet through mile after mile of well-sighted sweeping corners, and it is the one road here where a fast car gets to be a fast car. Check Caltrans QuickMap for closures first — the high section shuts for snow and storm damage — and fill up in La Cañada, because there is nowhere after it.
Is Mulholland Drive a good driving road?
No, and it is a good view. Mulholland Drive runs the ridge from Cahuenga Pass to Encino with 35 mph limits, speed humps, blind crests and parked tourists. The driving road is Mulholland Highway, twenty miles west in the Santa Monica Mountains, whose switchbacks near the Rock Store are the ones in every magazine photograph.
What time should I drive the Pacific Coast Highway?
Leave at seven. The Malibu stretch is 45 mph, heavily enforced, and clogs from mid-morning at weekends — Sunset to Cross Creek can take half an hour on a Saturday. Past Trancas the road opens to Leo Carrillo, County Line and Mugu Rock. Be at Point Mugu by a quarter past eight, and read the marine forecast the night before.
Which car is best for the Malibu canyons?
Something short and balanced: the Boxster, the Cayman, or the RS3, which drives all four wheels and forgives a damp morning. Latigo rewards that, and Decker, the narrowest road on the list, wants a narrow car; the wide cars belong on the coast road.
Can I drive a rental car from Los Angeles to Las Vegas?
Yes, any of them, with notice before the rental starts. We rent the car here and you bring it back here — there is no one-way drop in Nevada — and the number that decides the booking is the mileage allowance: 540 miles there and back is three days on a 200-mile band, and the exotics carry a shorter one.
What are the hazards on the canyon roads?
Sand and gravel washed across the apexes after rain, on roads where you cannot see far enough ahead to plan round it; cyclists and oncoming cars over blind crowns; and the fact that almost nothing at this end of the market carries a spare, so a cut sidewall on Latigo ends the morning where it happens. In our car that is a phone call to us rather than a problem you own.