BALBOA PARK — The San Diego Auto Museum’s collection “California Roll,” showing through January 2011, is a blend of speed, style and customs of the 1950s and 1960s — topped off with a diorama of an early Jack in the Box drive-through. A credit to Kenn Colclasure, who quests around the country to find interesting automobiles, the 12-car show represents an innovative period when crew-cut young men rebuilt cars that were once crafted on Detroit’s assembly lines. “It’s interesting … the styles of automobiles that have come out of California,” said Colclasure, the director of research and events for the museum. “There are low-riders, dragsters, customs, surf woodies, dry lakes racers and we even have a hippy bus.” In one corner of the show is a restaurant with a custom car near a window and a woman ready to serve a hamburger — a familiar scene for San Diegans. It even has an authentic Jack head bouncing on a spring. In 1951, businessman Robert O. Peterson opened the first Jack in the Box restaurant in San Diego on the main east-west thoroughfare leading into the city. Equipped with an intercom system and drive-through window, the tiny restaurant served up hamburgers for 18 cents, while a large jack-in-the-box clown kept watch from the roof. The diversity of the 12 cars on the museum floor reflects the early days of drag racing, off-road competition and classic car shows and their elaborate paint jobs and customizing. The museum features only a sampling of this car culture. Colclasure said it is sometimes difficult encouraging people to put their cars on display for four months. “That’s the length of time for each of our shows, and it gives me an opportunity to search for cars for the next show,” he said. “I was particularly pleased with the surf woodie I was able to find. The true wooden woodies are rare and valuable now and hard to find.” These “true wooden woodies,” Colclasure said, are large station wagons that peaked in popularity around the mid-century era. “[They] could haul surf boards,” he said. “You could even sleep inside.”