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KF5JRV > TODAY 12.12.18 14:34l 49 Lines 2372 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 26799_KF5JRV
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Subj: Today in History - Dec 12
Path: IW8PGT<IR2UBX<SR1BSZ<LU4ECL<LU1HVK<LU3DVN<N3HYM<KF5JRV
Sent: 181212/1224Z 26799@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA BPQ6.0.17
On this day in 2000, General Motors declares that it will begin to phase
out the 103-year-old Oldsmobile, the oldest automotive brand in the
United States. Oldsmobile had once been one of the most venerable and
innovative American brands–Olds cars were the first to have decorative
chrome trim, for example, and the first to have fully automatic
transmissions–but a GM reorganization in the mid-1980s had drained the
brand of most of its unique identity.
Lansing native Ransom Eli Olds created the Olds Motor Works in 1897. Ten
years before (reportedly because he did not like the smell of horses),
he had built a steam-powered car. After a factory fire destroyed 10 of
his 11 prototypes, Olds focused on trying to perfect–and sell–the only
car he had left: the small Curved Dash runabout. He was successful: the
runabout soon became the nation’s most popular automobile.
In 1904, the Curved Dash became the first mass-produced car in the
United States. That same year, Olds investors ousted the company’s
founder. (Ransom Olds wanted to keep on mass-producing inexpensive cars
that ordinary people could buy, while the investors wanted to build
pricey luxury automobiles.) Four years later, Olds Motor Works merged
with Buick to become General Motors. Within GM, Olds was known as the
“technology divisionö: it pioneered V-8 engines in 1915, chrome plating
in 1926, the Hydra-Matic automatic transmission in 1937, and the Rocket
V-8 in 1949.
Olds (it became Oldsmobile in 1942) was the most middlebrow of the GM
“ladder of brands,ö squeezed between mass-market Chevrolet and Pontiac
and luxury Cadillac and Buick. Despite a new slogan–“This is not your
father’s Oldsmobileö–that debuted in the 1980s after the GM
reorganization, buyers eventually began to lose interest in the brand’s
offerings. The brand was also notoriously slow to react to trends: for
instance, it was one of the last American carmakers to add sport utility
vehicles–the most popular and profitable cars of the 1990s–to its
lineup.
In 2004, four years after GM made its announcement, the phase-out of
Oldsmobile was complete. That April, the last Oldsmobile–a cherry-red
Alero–rolled off the Lansing assembly line and went straight to the R.E.
Olds Transportation Museum nearby, where you can see it today.
73 de Scott KF5JRV
Pmail: KF5JRV@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA
email: KF5JRV@ICLOUD.COM
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