Petersen Museum at Crossroads

His eyes light up and a smile teases his lips as Ken Gross fiddles with the locked door barring the way into the dim basement.

It is in these five chill concrete rooms underlying the former Orbach’s department store on Wilshire Boulevard’s Miracle Mile that some of the Petersen Automotive Museum’s best treasures--and best-kept secrets--are stored.

Walking among them, seeing what is usually kept hidden from the public, is one of the perquisites of the museum keeper.

There’s a Tucker Torpedo--the same ebony coupe that automotive visionary Preston Tucker chose for his personal car from among the handful of pre-production models his skeleton crew cobbled together in 1948 in a doomed bid to stave off financial ruin and congressional censure. The Petersen basement, in fact, houses two of only 49 Tuckers left in the world.

The Pantera sports coupe that Elvis Presley shot in a rage when it failed to start one day sits near a 1948 Davis--one of just 14 of the big torpedo-nosed three-wheeled cars built in San Francisco by the short-lived Davis Automotive Co.

Actor Steve McQueen’s 1956 Jaguar XKSS is parked in one of the cavernous rooms, alongside song stylist Mel Torme’s 1937 Jaguar SS100. The unmistakable toilet-seat-shaped grille of a 1958 Edsel--the personal car of Mel Blanc, voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and countless other Looney Tunes characters--peeks around the corner as if ashamed to be seen in the same room with the sensuous Jags.

It is the delight--and dilemma--of the Petersen to have these vehicles and scores more of comparable caliber.

They help make the 7-year-old Petersen one of the largest and most respected automotive museums in the country. The displays on the three public floors include 125 to 150 vehicles, depending on the size of the rotating and visiting exhibitions.

But the lights down in the basement are rarely on, and there’s no room upstairs for the 125 or so cars that sit in the vaults--or for the hundreds of other classic, collectible and historically significant vehicles and automotive artifacts that the Petersen’s staff, led for the last four years by veteran automotive journalist Gross, has patiently tracked down.

Numerous car fanciers have been wined and dined and wooed with promises of immortality--and big tax breaks--if they donate their collections to the Petersen.

And now, as Gross prepares to leave the museum and return to the East Coast to devote time to family and his writing career, the Petersen has to come up with millions of dollars to fund an expansion that will make room for what must come if success is to be ensured.

Carrying on is the task of the museum’s inaugural director, Dick Messer, who was called back this month to serve as interim chief but says he also is a candidate for the permanent job. (In fact, there is no search for a new director while Messer and members of the Petersen Automotive Museum Foundation’s board check one another out, said board Chairman Bruce Meyer.)

Messer--a hotel-industry veteran, avid vintage-auto racer and operator of an annual vintage-auto exposition, sale and swap meet in San Diego--says his principal role will be to provide continuity and to carry out existing plans and programs.

But Messer, who directed the Petersen from its opening in 1994 until 1997, also has his own ideas for fund-raising and expansion, including a “destination” restaurant in the Petersen building that would play on its dual location in the museum and on the once-fabled Miracle Mile. He wants to stage more exhibitions that use the Petersen’s largely unseen collection of celebrity vehicles, lean on its connections to Hollywood and Southern California car culture and play off his own interests in motorcycles and auto racing.

He also hopes to develop an improved Web site that would promote the museum and allow subscribers around the world to view all of the Petersen’s displays and vehicles and use its other resources, including an automotive-history library now in the planning stages.

“Ken took us through the difficult stages,” Messer said of Gross’ tenure--which included staving off the demise of the museum and shepherding it through its separation from the county when the Natural History Museum’s directors decided early this year to stop subsiding the Petersen.

“Now it’s my job to take us to the next level,” he said.

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Messer faces a considerable challenge. But the Petersen has a lot going for it right now, including the strong support of its multimillionaire benefactor--automotive-publishing magnate Robert E. Petersen--and a cadre of wealthy auto collectors who live in Southern California.

And then there is the region’s almost fanatical exultation of the auto. Southern California is the heart of hot-rod and custom-car territory. Its millions of motorists spend billions of dollars a year to buy, beautify and beef up their cars and trucks.

Museums such as the Petersen can feed off that kind of enthusiasm.

“There is a growing awareness in this country of the role the automobile has played in our history,” said Jackie L. Frady, president of the National Assn. of Automobile Museums and executive director of the National Automobile Museum: The Harrah Collection in Reno.

“So the key to success in the future is to offer ever-changing experiences at our museums,” she said. “We need to bring in changing exhibits throughout the year. We need to partner with schools to show how we can be an educational tool--after all, history, sociology, science and math all are part of understanding automotive history. And we need to make our museums more interactive and more hands-on.”

All of that, of course, takes money.

And there’s another wrinkle. As the auto industry enters its second century, many in the first generation of serious automobile collectors are pondering ways to ensure their immortality.

Donations of significant private automotive collections are rising, Frady said, and that means that major museums such as the Petersen find themselves in an awkward position.

They want stuff--that is the nature of a museum--but they have no place to display it.

For the Petersen, the only way out is to develop a major fund-raising campaign. Already, plans for expansion have been studied. An architectural consultant has proposed alternatives that include adding two floors; developing the basement vaults into a public space; and expanding into the parking structure.

Costs haven’t been worked out, but even the most modest of the proposals is expected to reach into eight figures, insiders said.

On the plus side, Gross said, the museum is close to covering operational costs from the proceeds of paid admissions and special events.

“But we’re not yet financially independent. We need to supplement the daily funding to be able to go forward,” he said.

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Under Gross, the museum has moved away from reliance on purely car-themed exhibitions such as its 1997 celebration of the Ferrari marque’s 50th anniversary.

The museum is aiming for broader appeal, as with the Grinch cars show that opened Friday in conjunction with the film “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” Another example is the upcoming “Fantasy and Fins,” which will combine the sometimes surrealistic paintings of automotive artist Nicola Wood with the wildly finned 1950s and ‘60s Cadillacs and other classic cars that she paints.

But cars remain the reason for the Petersen, whose mission statement is “the study of the automobile and its influence on our culture and our lives.”

The basement collection--and the desire to bring it into the light--underscores that.

As Messer joins Gross at the end of the vault tour, his eyes light on a creamy-yellow 1939 Packard Super 8 limousine convertible. It’s the car that carried Argentine dictator Juan Peron along Buenos Aires’ broad boulevards in countless parades and military reviews during the strongman’s long reign.

On Jan. 1, the car will carry the president of the Tournament of Roses through Pasadena during the 2001 Rose Parade.

“See,” Messer says. “We might be a museum, but we are alive, and part of the community.”