Dead at 106: Oldsmobile

The last car from America's oldest car company rolls off the line Thursday in Lansing, Mich.

April 29, 2004: 11:08 AM EDT

By Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNN/Money staff writer



NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The last car from America's oldest car company -- an Oldsmobile Alero -- is due to roll off a Lansing, Mich., assembly line Thursday.

The death of the Oldsmobile -- a brand with sales that have dropped steadily in recent years -- marks the end of an era in American automaking. Olds says it was the first company to mass-produce cars -- not Ford -- and that it pioneered the use of chrome and automatic transmissions in American cars.

The last Alero to come off the line Thursday in Lansing is destined for a home in the R.E. Olds Transportation Museum, named for Ransom Eli Olds, who co-founded the Olds Motor Vehicle Company in August 1897.

"Oldsmobile production has remained unprofitable and, therefore, GM's current planning is to end production with the 2004 models," General Motors, the world's biggest automaker, said in September 2001.

The last 500 Aleros produced will be painted metallic cherry red and carry special Final 500 markings. Special final edition versions of Oldsmobile's Bravada SUV and Silhouette minivan are also being offered by those Oldsmobile dealers that remain.

The final edition Bravada has been a particularly hot seller, said Vince Peckens, sales manager at DeMaagd GMC, Nissan-Oldsmobile in Battle Creek, Mich.

Peckens said his dealership will keep selling Oldsmobiles until there are no more left on the lot. That will probably happen by the end of the summer, he said.


Curved Dash
There are about 1,750 Oldsmobile dealerships still in operation, said Rebecca Harris, a GM spokesperson.

While the Alero will be no more, the Lansing plant will continue operating, producing the last 2004 model year Pontiac Grand Ams, a car fundamentally similar to the Alero. A new plant nearby will produce the 2005 Pontiac G6, a replacement for the Grand Am.

Joined GM in '08
Oldsmobile was the second brand to become part of General Motors.

The automaker, by then called Olds Motor Works, joined GM in November 1908, two months after Buick, according to General Motors historical information.

Ransom E. Olds had left the company four years before that, dismayed that the company was turning toward manufacturing high-end cars in contrast to his own vision of building inexpensive cars for the masses, said Bob Casey, transportation curator for the Henry Ford Museum.

He went on to found a new car company called Reo, for his initials, said Casey. That company stopped making cars in 1936 but continued for some time as a truck manufacturer.

Under Alfred P. Sloan's vision of creating a ladder of brands that would allow buyers to step up to increasingly luxurious GM cars as their wealth increased, Oldsmobile became GM's mid-market brand, said Casey. It was positioned somewhere between the high-end brands like Cadillac and Buick and the more mass-market bands Chevrolet and Pontiac.

Once GM (GM: Research, Estimates) began relying more on sharing components, and virtually entire cars, among different brands, Oldsmobile began to suffer from a loss of identity, said Ken Gross, an automotive historian and columnist for Old Cars Weekly.

"It was the ultimate middle child," said Gross.

Olds claims to be the first company to mass produce gasoline-powered automobiles, something that is often credited to Ford Motor Co. Ford (F: Research, Estimates) takes credit for having the first moving assembly line in 1913.

According to historical information from GM, Olds' Curved Dash automobile was mass-produced in 1901. Whether or not that's true "depends on your definition of 'mass produce'," said Casey.

Oldsmobile also claims to be the first to use chrome decoration on its cars. In 1926, the shiny metal plating was used on Olds radiator shells. It also claims the first cars with a fully automatic transmission, the Hydra-Matic, which debuted in 1940 models.

The 1972 Oldsmobile Cutlass W-30 4-4-2 convertible muscle car was named one of the most collectible American cars by auto auction company Kruse International in 2003.

 

Last Oldsmobile Rolls Off Michigan Assembly Line

Thu Apr 29, 7:03 PM ET Add U.S. National - Reuters to My Yahoo!


By Michael Ellis

DETROIT (Reuters) - After 107 years of tooling roads from Nova Scotia to San Diego, the last Oldsmobile rolled off a Michigan assembly line on Thursday, marking the end of the oldest auto brand in the United States.



Workers signed their names under the hood of the last car -- a cherry red Alero -- which will be displayed at the R.E. Olds Transportation Museum. It will end up in the collection of parent company General Motors Corp. .


Ransom E. Olds founded Oldsmobile in Lansing in 1897, and soon after the turn of the century "the Olds" became a favorite with its Curved Dash. It carried a sticker price of $650 and was one of the first mass-produced cars.


GM purchased the automaker in 1908.


Chris Duyck, president of the Oldsmobile Club of Canada in Ontario, said he is "very disheartened that it would come to this -- the end of the Oldsmobile.


"It's always been such a step above other cars -- more luxurious, a little bit more of a status symbol to a lot of people," he said.


Duyck said he met his wife when her father had a 1958 Olds. "I've often wondered, jokingly of course, whether I was attracted to her dad's Olds or to her. It was a beige, two-door hardtop." They've been married 39 years.


Duyck says a completely restored 1958 Olds costs a collector about $18,000 to $20,000.


Oldsmobile was the first to use chrome-plated trim in 1926 and the first to offer fully automatic transmissions in 1939. In 1966, Oldsmobile was the first American car brand to revive front-wheel drive.


Fred Reinhold, 74, of Woodbridge, New Jersey, who owned an auto repair shop in Brooklyn, New York, for 40 years, said he was sad to see the car go.


"I owned a maroon colored Olds when I was in my 20s. I saw a lot of them come and go over the years," Reinhold said. "The Olds had a strong body, strong chassis, good suspension, good motor and the transmission was good. Overall, it was a very well made car. It's still a good car. It's sad to see another one gone by the wayside."


Oldsmobile is the second historic U.S. car brand to be killed in recent years. DaimlerChrysler AG phased out the Plymouth, created in 1928.


Some folks say the beginning of the end was the 1980s GM ad campaign touting: "This is not your father's Oldsmobile." But the cars still reminded young consumers of the family sedan.


"It was a great brand, that's how I'll remember it," said Alan Starling, a former Olds dealer and past chairman of the National Automobile Dealers Association.

 

Oldsmobile brand comes to the end of the road

Thu Apr 29,12:19 PM ET Add U.S. National - AFP to My Yahoo!



DETROIT, United States (AFP) - The last Oldsmobile car rolled off the assembly line in Lansing, Michigan, as General Motors Corp. brought the shutters down on the oldest American automotive brand.



An invitation-only audience of 1,000 was on hand to see a dark red Olds Alero leave the plant and bid farewell to a storied brand with a history that stretches back more than a century, a GM spokeswoman said.


The car is the last of 500 final-edition versions, and will eventually end up as a museum piece in GM's Lansing Heritage Center alongside vintage Olds cars like the Oldsmobile Rocket 88 and the 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado.


Over the years, Americans bought more than 35 million Oldsmobiles, but GM finally pulled the plug in December 2000, saying the brand was simply unprofitable.


Efforts to shake off the brand's stodgy image failed to convince Americans that the latest Olds models were -- in the words of the advertising executives -- "not your father's Oldsmobile."


Once-loyal customers turned to the Toyota Camry, Lexus, BMW and other imports. Last year, the company sold about 126,000 Oldsmobiles.


In its day, however, the car's engineering was state of the art.


Oldsmobile was the first mass-produced car with an automatic transmission. It was the first with a speedometer and the first modern car with front-wheel drive.


The 1949 Rocket 88 inspired a blues song written by Ike Turner. A young George W. Bush returned to Midland, Texas in the 1970s driving an Olds Cutlass.


And its passing is a nostalgic one for many Americans who can remember the days when they first borrowed their dad's wheels and tasted the freedom of the open road, even if it was in a "long and lumbering 1964 Jetstar 88, with massive bench seats, a temperamental engine and a tendency to tip precariously in turns," as one op-ed writer recently recalled in the Chicago Tribune.


"To a newly minted driver, a car like the Jetstar was freedom. Didn't really matter how it looked or performed. It cut the surly bonds that tied adolescent to home, and that was good enough."

 

:'(

You will be missed. An Oldsmobile was my first car, so I'll miss the brand. They were really boring as of late, but I wish they got rid of Pontiac, Saturn or Buick instead of this brand

 

The newer Olds were a much better looking and handling car than Buick...I wish the roles were reversed. I almost bought an Intrigue a few years back...nice car. But, I bought into the Honda family instead.

 

It really is a shame to see them go. I really liked the Intrigue too. I think Buick's got legs, but Saturn is definitely a mistake an a joke to me. Buick is around a century old too. I'd hate to see that brand go. GM should have killed Saturn, continued on Olds' assualt as a foreign fighter, and elevated Buick up to Lexus fighter standards, as they're doing now. The Intrigue looks 10 times better than anything offered at Saturn.

 

I agree. IMO, Oldsmobile had GMs best lineup.