Foundation Plans Car History Museum : Automobiles: It would be housed in a Wilshire district building. Exhibits would range from a 1932 Duesenberg to the torch rally pace car of the 1984 L. A. Olympics.

Los Angeles’ next museum may very well celebrate a unique part of the city’s culture: the automobile.

The private support group for the County Museum of Natural History has reached tentative agreement to buy the former Ohrbach’s department store in the Wilshire district for an automotive history museum.

Plans call for using the building to exhibit 74 cars owned by the museum and stored in a warehouse. They range from Model Ts and a 1932 Duesenberg to the 1984 Buick used to pace the torch relay leading up to the Los Angeles Olympics.

“Of all the places that should commemorate the automobile, it should be Los Angeles,” said Byron Matson, curator of a privately owned collection of more than 180 cars--the Merle Norman Classic Beauty Collection in the San Fernando Valley.

Los Angeles’ love affair with the car fueled the city’s rapid development, while contributing to the demise of a public transportation system once known as the “world’s largest interurban electrical railway.” And it spawned two of the region’s biggest problems: smog and traffic.

“Not only did it affect the development of Southern California,” said Jim Zordich, curator of the museum’s automotive history collection, “but Southern California in turn affected examples of the automobile,” giving birth to the convertible and smog equipment.

Officials with the museum confirmed Monday that the Resolution Trust Corp., which took over the Ohrbach’s building from the failed Columbia Savings & Loan Assn., has accepted the museum foundation’s offer of $11.1 million for the property at Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue.

The building was constructed in 1964. The department store closed in 1986.

The foundation has until Aug. 26 to complete the deal, but Mark Rodriguez, chief deputy to the museum curator, said Monday, “I am very optimistic that this will come to pass.”

The four-story building, which includes an 850-space parking structure, is a block from the County Museum of Art, the George C. Page Museum and a planned Craft and Folk Art Museum.

“It would truly then become a Museum Square,” Rodriguez said.

Word of the project has begun spreading through the automotive industry. Museum officials said they have been contacted by foreign car manufacturers who have offered to lend or donate vehicles as well as provide financial support for the museum. They declined to identify potential donors.

The museum has had a car collection since 1929, Zordich said.

Until a few years ago, about a dozen cars were displayed on a rotating basis at the museum in Exposition Park. Recently, however, “Most of our space has been closed because of the need to bring the museum of up to seismic code,” Zordich said.

Zordich said that the collection includes a number of cars manufactured in Los Angeles. “It is a very strong collection in the pre-1920 period.”

The most recent addition is a 1986 Pontiac Fiero “which General Motors gave us after abandoning the Fiero line.”

“It’s not as well-balanced a collection as I would like it to be,” he said. “A lot of that is due to the fact the collection is the result of public donation.”

Supervisor Ed Edelman, whose district includes the Ohrbach’s site, said Monday that the new museum would be an addition to the neighborhood, but that he hopes it also would include Red Cars and other examples of public transit.

John Stewart McGaughy, curator of the 2 1/2-year-old San Diego Automotive Museum in Balboa Park, said the Los Angeles County car collection is “pretty significant.”

“They have gone out of their way to collect vehicles that were born and bred in Los Angeles. . . . It is a very good collection,” he said.

Museum spokesman Rodriguez said that the private, nonprofit foundation plans to use private money to acquire the building and is hoping not to need any county funds for operations.

But Richard B. Dixon, the county’s chief administrative officer, Dixon said in an interview that the county may issue bonds to help finance the purchase. The bonds would be repaid from admission and parking fees and private donations.

County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn plans to ask the Board of Supervisors today (Tue) to explore ways the county can assist with financing operation of the facility.

Rodriguez said that the museum foundation already has lined up private benefactors who are willing to pay for renovating the facility, estimated to cost from $2.8 million to $3.5 million.

“That whole building is cavernous,” Rodriguez said. “It lends itself very nicely to an auto history museum.”

Rodriguez said the museum also hopes to include other American history collections in the museum.

The Ohrbach’s building was constructed in 1964. The department store closed in 1986.