100 YEARS IT'S A CENTURY OF SERVICE FOR THE AUTO CLUB.

Byline: John Canalis Staff Writer

When the Auto Club of Southern California started its engine a century ago today, 10 drivers signed on for the ride.

Then-steep monthly fees of $5 limited membership to well-to-do gentlemen with surnames like Hancock, Chandler and Garland. Women weren't banned but social convention kept them in the passenger seat.

Within five years, the Auto Club quickly became more, well, pedestrian. Populist as a Plymouth. Common as a cup holder.

Nearly 5 million Southern Californians, an estimated 45 percent of households, now hold the agency's red, white and blue cards - passkeys to roadside assistance, retail discounts and off-site DMV services.

To mark its 100th anniversary, the Auto Club will:

--Give a media tour today of roadside landmarks.

--Present a transportation symposium with the Smithsonian Institution at 9 a.m. Thursday in Davidson Conference Center of University of Southern California.

--Sponsor a tow truck convoy at 10 a.m. Friday to deliver toys to children at L.A.'s Orthopedic Hospital.

--Host a member day celebration at 9 a.m. Saturday in the California Science Center at L.A.'s Exposition Park.

The Auto Club began reaching out to more common drivers in 1905 when it repositioned itself as a service organization. Dues dropped to the Model T price of $1.

``It became, How do we help people who own automobiles? not people who sell automobiles,'' said Matthew Roth, Auto Club historian.

A year later the club posted Los Angeles' first directional signs, which pointed drivers to Santa Monica from downtown L.A. Before that, drivers used less-than-technical methods: following utility wires, handwritten signs - or dead reckoning and luck.

The signs ``took some of the adventure out of driving . . .'' Roth said.

By the middle part of the century, the state gradually took over the issuing of directional signs, but the Auto Club continued in an advisory role.

Auto Club crews used data from sign postings as the basis for its well- known road maps.

``That was the beginning of the whole travel function,'' Roth said.

In 1909, Touring Topics, a member magazine now tagged Westways, premiered with a story on the Los Angeles Auto Show. The magazine showcased places to visit by car, rated service stations and reviewed gadgets.

Come 1911, drivers grappled with an issue that still reverberates: the price of car insurance.

``It was really expensive to buy auto insurance because underwriters rated cars the same way they do commercial goods in transit,'' Roth said. ``They saw a need for low-cost auto insurance so they went out and started it.''

The club issued its first policy in 1912 under its Inter-Insurance Exchange program, which is now incorporated separately from the not-for- profit club.

Twenty-five-year member Kari Miller has used the Auto Club for that blushing moment of car ownership: locking her keys in the car. With the engine running.

Dispatchers and drivers were polite, she said, and didn't make her feel embarrassed.

``You know you have someone to rely on,'' she said.

Three years after its first insurance policy, the Auto Club's travel office was opened with the help of an older form a transportation: trains.

The club offered a service carrying drivers' vehicles on freight carts to their vacation destinations. When commercial air travel became widely available to the middle class in the 1950s, the Auto Club began offering flight packages.

``Members would say, You can get my car there but I wish you could book me an airplane ticket,'' Roth said.

Thank - or blame - the club for speed limits. In 1923 club attorneys drafted the Uniform Vehicle Code.

One of the club's best-known local features isn't on wheels. The Auto Club's Spanish Colonial revival building on Figueroa Street and Adams Boulevard, which it has occupied since 1923, carries historic landmark status.

In 1924, roadside assistance was boosted with the Auto Club's Highway Patrol Service in the 13 counties of Southern California.

Using the slogan, ``The Good Samaritan of the Highway,'' Auto Club drivers patroled for stranded motorists and helped them, whether or not they were members.

``That became the signature service,'' Roth said. ``It's the kind of thing that's really prone to metaphor. Some of these roads, I could show you pictures, you were really out there in the middle of nowhere.''

A BRIEF HISTORY

Automobile Club of Southern California timeline

1900: Car lovers found Auto Club on Dec. 13

1906: Signposting starts

1909: First map book, members magazine

1912: First insurance policy

1923: Authors California Vehicle Act, including speed limits, road rules

1941: Makes signs and maps for WWII effort

1967: Offers emissions tests

1983: First homeowners insurance policy

1991: First to return insurance premiums under Proposition 103

2000: Membership approaches 5 million

SOURCE: AAA's Westways magazine

AUTO CLUB FACTS

The Auto Club at a glance

Founded: Dec. 13, 1900

Membership: Nearly 5 million

Headquarters: 2601 S. Figueroa St.

District offices: 68 in 13 Southern California counties

Services: Roadside assistance, insurance, travel agency, financial products, restaurant, hotel and garage ratings, DMV renewals, safety programs, advocacy

Affiliation: The club is the largest of 86 in the AAA, which has 1,000 offices altogether in the United States and Canada.

SOURCE: AAA

CAPTION(S):

4 photos, 2 boxes

Photo:

(1) Auto Club of Southern California headquarters were at Eighth and Olive streets in 1912, the year the club first issued insurance.

(2 -- 3) This is what passed for a traffic jam in 1936, above, as cars traveled San Fernando Road and Fletcher Drive in Glendale. At left, the Auto Club boosted auto and pedestrian safety with its posting of stop signs, like the one in this 1925 photo.

(4) This Newhall Tunnel shot, likely taken about 1915, shows early road conditions.

Photos courtesy of Automobile Club of Southern California, University of Southern California

Box: (1) AUTO CLUB FACTS (See text)

(2) A BRIEF HISTORY (See text)