Recently, a small auto concern in the US called General Motors faced bankruptcy. It's loss to the world market can hardly be fathomed. A few years before, in 2000, the marketing directors of GM decided to ashcan the oldest marque amid it's mouldering stable of contenders. GM was comprised of Pontiac, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, Buick, and Oldsmobile. It is Oldsmobile that we are concerned with, it's history, legacy and originator. On April 29, 2004, the last Oldsmobile to be built, an Alero, rolled off the line at the Lansing Car Assembly plant in Michigan. According to GM's official figures, it was the 35,229,218th Oldsmobile to be built since Ransom started up the first one in 1896. Oddly enough, 2004 also marked the hundredth anniversary of it's founder leaving the company.

A legacy bigger than any tomb

Ransom Eli Olds was a fascinating and busy fellow who died in 1950. He designed the first truly successful mass-produced American gasoline-powered automobile. He helped design the first true pickup trucks. He put his effort into at least five corporations, including a lawn mower company, and one town. During his early decades, he associated with or influenced practically every future hero of the US and Canadian auto industries.

A little curiosity can go a long way

He built several one-off or prototype gas, electric and steam vehicles¹before he learned to build assembled² vehicles with most of the parts out-sourced to parts and component manufacturers with extremely detailed specifications. His insistence on personally gauging the usefulness of the delivered parts led to many of the the modern auto-making techniques that held Detroit in good stead for many years. His ability to consider simplicity and economy as bedmates with efficiency and style also contributed to the birthing of the new industry. He was ultimately responsible for the first assembly line (albeit without the conveyor belts that Henry Ford made famous), the first purpose-built auto factory in the US, the first modern pickup truck ³and the first truly popular gasoline automobile.

Riding The Storm Out

Ransom's companies have an unusual association with popular music. Lyricist Vincent Bryan and composer Gus Edwards had a hit with 'In My Merry Oldsmobile' on sheet music and piano roll in 1905. It was also a hit Columbia wax cylinder when sung by the great pair Arthur Collins and Byron G. Harlan and recorded in August of 1905. The Rocket 88 engine first offered in 1949 inspired a song written by Ike Turner and spawned a band name or two⁴. The REO Speed-Wagon truck brand from Ransom's later corporation eventually inspired some musicians in Champaign, Illinois to name themselves after it in 1968. In fact, in some parts of the world, the band is better known than the vehicle that gave it it's name, despite the fact that before it's demise, the company sold it's vehicles all over the world, including police departments in Denmark, and bus companies in Australia. The band REO Speedwagon actually holds the trademark to the name at this time. The brand suffered another musical connection in the late 1990s when someone called Ringo Starr did a series of TV adverts with his daughter in a campaign designed to convince Americans that the vehicle Senor Starr was driving in the ad was 'Not Your Father's Oldsmobile'.

Second Chapter

William Crapo 'Willy' Durant⁵ bought up Oldsmobile on Nov. 12, 1908, four years after Olds had split the scene and was well on his way to fame with the REO brand. This acquisition made Olds Motor Works the second firm within the GM stable, as Durant had taken control of Buick on November 1, 1904. Durant had his own concern before that, the Durant-Dort Carriage Company, which supposedly had the honor of being the largest horsed carriage manufacturer in the world before the unhorsed variety took over. Hedging his bets, a ploy his fellow gamblers in the stock market were aware of, Durant kept the carriage works in business until 1917! During his long career in Michigan, Durant was kicked out of GM, formed United Motors, Mason Motors, Whiting Motors and Chevrolet, then kicked his way back into control of GM, taking United and Chevrolet, as well as the other smaller companies, back into the fold with him.

Innovation is our middle name

Despite being the middle rung on the GM ladder of prosperity, stuck between Chevy and Pontiac at the bottom and Buick and Cadillac at the top, Oldsmobile engineers managed to leverage their position into an ability to test out innovations that were too experimental for the expensive brands and too redolent of luxury for the cheap ones. Oldsmobiles featured the earliest extravagant use of nickel chrome plating on their radiator shells in 1926. Oldsmobiles also featured the first successful use of an OHV (overhead valve) V8 and one of the earliest mass-produced automatic transmissions, called the Hydromatic.

In August 1896 the prototype Olds Trap was tested and achieved 25 m.p.h., which was witnessed and reported by a reporter from the Lansing State Republican in their August 12th edition, which was picked-up by several other newspapers.
Ransom might not have found his place in automotive history without a little accident. His Olds Motor Works, incorporated 1899, which had subsumed his father's Old Gasoline Works and an earlier firm called the Olds Motor Vehicle Company⁶ suffered a fire on March 9, 1901, which consumed all the produced models and prototypes except two electric prototypes and one gasoline model, a tiny runabout, hardly bigger than a dogcart, that came to be known as the Curved Dash Olds. Priced at $650.00, which was a step down from it's originally suggested sticker of $1000.00, the little car was slapped together as fast as they could make them with parts bought from anyone who would give them credit, including the Dodge Brothers, who provided transmissions and Henry Leland⁷ , who supplied 2,000 engines. The fire had also wiped out Ransom's hoped for entry into the electric auto market for 'city vehicles'. He had had high hopes as fully half of all the registered unhorsed vehicles in the world were electrics, with steam and petrol dragging behind. The fire had also destroyed several higher-priced and more intricate gasoline vehicles, as well as thousands of dollars worth of parts, bodies, engines and tooling. As it was, the Curved Dash made good, with 30 of them surviving to be registered and run in the 2004 London to Brighton Veteran Car Run. An estimated total of 12,443 were built during it's model run that lasted from 1900 until 1904. They had orders for 600 at the time of the fire, and before the year was out they had produced 425. The next year they did better, with 2,500, making it the most successful model in the country. In 1903, they almost doubled their production and the final year saw 5,508 rolling down the railways to their new owners. So, no matter what Model T aficionados tell you, once upon a time there was another king of the road.

The little runabout that could.

All in all, the Curved Dash or Model R, as it was officially known, was a sturdy little monster, with artillery wheels, Goodyear tyres, a tiny engine and a couple of flat spots charitably labelled 'seats'. It had a driver's seat side crank for starting. The cars were powered by a single cylinder four-stroke 4.5 bhp engine. The 95.4 cubic inch engine turned at 500 rpm and was said to emit one chug per telegraph pole. It had two forward speeds, and two reverse ones.
The Curved Dash had a wooden carriage built on top of tubular steel axles. The whole thing weighed 700 pounds. A main leaf spring linked the front and rear axles on each side. Steering was done with a center tiller and braking was done by a pedal that caused a steel band to clamp around a cast-iron flange in the planetary transmission. Since the transmission was coupled to the drive chain, any failure there meant no braking. It was often shown in early adverts trammeling around in the dirt and grass and the US Postal Office, after trashing, erm, testing several other makes, bought Curved Dash Oldsmobiles as it's first motorized delivery vehicles. It supposedly got forty miles to the gallon and it's tiny tank held five US gallons. It's tiny radiator held five gallons of water. And somewhere in there, a hand operated pump provided lubrication to the engine when it began to ping.

In 1903 the Olds 'Pirate' set a World record at Daytona Beach by covering 5 miles in 6.5 minutes. In 1905 two Oldsmobiles completed the first transcontinental race from New York, NY to Portland, Oregon in 44 days. In 1922 an Oldsmobile established another record, traveling 1000 miles in 15 hours. Cannonball Baker drove a 6 cylinder Model 30 from New York to LA in 12 ½ days.

Get it right the second time

The company that Ransom founded after he left Oldsmobile was called R.E.O., after his initials. He had the money and the influence and the fame to do pretty much what he pleased. He began by doing just that, building the auto that his board of directors whouldn't allow him to at Olds. He went on to build some of the most magnificent and efficient autos of his age, including the top of the line, the Royale. Oddly enough, during the waning years of the R.E.O. manufacturing concern, in the late fifties, after the auto division was closed, the truck division spun off to the Diamond and later the White companies, all that was left was a series of powered push lawn mowers, the top of the line being the Royale. During his time with R.E.O., which lasted in one form or another until his death⁸, Ransom initiated the first purpose-built pickup trucks and mid-weight commercial vehicles, as well as an improved over the road tractor 'semi' that was designed to pull one or more trailers from city to city. He also built chassis for customers who took them to customizers who put long bodies on them for fire engines, police transports, buses and small-gage traction railroads.

Throughout his lifetime, Ransom never tired of experimenting or even playing with ideas and investments outside of the auto pioneering he was famous for. He even built a town.