Red-Hot for Restoration : History: Built in 1911 and once part of the L.A. trolley system, Red Car No. 4601 also served as home to a Torrance family. Now a businessman’s interest in the Wilson Park eyesore gets the city’s attention.

It’s 82 years old now, and recent years have not been kind. It’s been neglected, abused, virtually abandoned, and not everyone thinks it’s worth saving.

It is Pacific Electric Co. Red Car No. 4601, a relic of the days when vast fleets of street cars carried millions of passengers throughout the Los Angeles area. For the past six years the car has been sitting unattended and largely forgotten in a maintenance yard at the back of Wilson Park in Torrance.

Now, however, Car. No. 4601 has suddenly become a hot item. At least four groups or individuals have expressed an interest in restoring the car to its former glory.

But it may not be so easy.

“It will be a challenge,” said Gene Barnett, Torrance parks and recreation director. “It could be that (the car) is way beyond its usable life.”

Built in 1911 for the Southern Pacific Railroad, the 72-foot-long, 10-foot-wide, steel-walled car spent its first three decades as part of an Oakland-Alameda transit system. In 1942, it was sold for $5,586 to the U.S. Maritime Commission, which brought it to Los Angeles and used it to haul defense workers to their job sites. In 1944, it was sold to the Pacific Electric Co. and made part of Los Angeles’ Red Car trolley system.

Then tragedy struck. In 1946, No. 4601 was involved in a head-on collision with a freight train at 128th Street and Athens Way in Athens. The motorman was killed, 70 passengers were injured and one end of the car was smashed.

Later in 1946, a Torrance resident named Forest Wilson bought the damaged car for a mere $50. Wilson, a Mobil Oil employee who had been a Navy electrician during World War II, moved the car to his property on Newton Street in Torrance’s Walteria neighborhood and turned it into a two-bedroom house. In addition to adding a porch and some other built-on rooms, Wilson covered the old car with shingles. He also removed the damaged section, shortening the car to about 60 feet.

“It was very nice, very comfortable, once you got used to it being 10 feet, 4 inches wide,” Virginia Wilson, 76, recalled of the house where she, her husband and their four children lived. “We were very happy in it.”

Most people didn’t even know the Wilson house had been made from a street car.

“I used to tell people it was a street car and they didn’t believe me,” said Wilson’s daughter, Mertz Wilson Maher, who lived in the house until she was 8. “It just looked like a house.”

The Wilson family lived in the house until 1963, when they built another house next door. Wilson converted the Red Car house into a workshop.

After Forest Wilson died in 1986, Virginia Wilson planned to scrap the Red Car house. But when they started taking the shingles off the car, revealing a still shiny shell underneath, it attracted the attention of the Torrance Historical Society.

The group persuaded the city to take over the old car. In 1987, Virginia Wilson sold the car to the city for $1, and it was then moved to its current location in Wilson Park.

It has sat there ever since.

“We always thought that a group would step forward with a plan to make it into a museum or a clubhouse or something useful,” Barnett said. “But that didn’t happen.”

Meanwhile, in the six years that No. 4601 has sat in the park, vandals have broken out all of its windows and the elements have beaten down on the unprotected exterior. The steel walls started rusting. Hornets invaded. It deteriorated.

“It was in beautiful condition when we moved it here,” said Cecilia Laxton, program chairman for the Torrance Historical Society. “But now . . .”

No. 4601 might have rusted away, except for a Long Beach developer named Philip Zimmermann who approached Torrance officials with a proposal to take the old Red Car off the city’s hands. Zimmermann wants to restore the old car and take it to Long Beach for use as a diner at that city’s Transit Mall. He is expected to formally present his plans to the council at its meeting Aug. 24.

Some Torrance officials were in favor of the idea, since the city doesn’t have the money to fix up the car. Estimates for a restoration project range from $50,000 to $150,000. But when word got out that the old Red Car might head for Long Beach, some Torrance residents reacted with alarm.

“When I heard that, I thought, ‘That’s ridiculous, we need to take care of it ourselves,’ ” Laxton said. “I want to see it stay in Torrance.”

“We don’t want to see the Red Car leave Torrance,” said Paul Nowatka of the Torrance-based Curtiss-Wright Historical Assn. Nowatka said his group may join with the Torrance Historical Society to raise funds for a restoration project.

Barnett said that the city redevelopment agency has also expressed some interest in the Red Car.

Even though they don’t want him to have it, both Laxton and Nowatka praised developer Zimmermann for generating renewed interest in the car.

“It was a wake-up call,” Nowatka said of Zimmermann’s proposal.

Zimmermann, meanwhile, said he still wants the car, although he contends that the city should donate it to him since it has been neglected for so long.

“That baby is never going to ride the rails again,” Zimmermann said, noting that, in addition to the other damage, the car’s wheels are gone. “It’s in as bad a shape as a car can be.”

Zimmermann’s question for Torrance officials is: “Do you really have $60,000 to throw into this thing?”

Torrance Councilman Don Lee, a former president of the historical society, acknowledged that “Torrance has a lot of higher priorities than restoring a Red Car.” He added, however, that “if there was a groundswell of people in Torrance who were interested in restoring it, that would be great.”