While in MI visiting my daughter yesterday, I took a ride to Lansing and visited the R.E. Olds Transportation Museum. Was a really good take for $7 and I would highly recommend it if you are in the area. A close second love to Buick for me is Oldsmobile and they had some great exhibits and cars, wish they had a few more cars, but the Museum was really well done. I love the automotive history in MI and similar to Henry Ford, these innovators such as Ransom Olds came to the US with nothing and built this country through innovation in many other areas outside of automobiles.
Helpful folks too. I emailed them with a question about a Oldsmobile model I'm building. Got a reply back in a couple of days. They're on my 'next USA trip list"
I grew up in that area and did the assembly plant tour several times over the years on different school field trips. In 10th grade our Civics class assignment was to be teacher for a day. was the entire semesters grade. I gathered $5.00 from each kid in the class. handed out permission slips. chartered a private buss. made arrangements for the tour and lunch on the road. I think around 40 kids went and I got an A+
I remember as a kid using a Reo push (no motor) reel type mower. I also once saw a curved-dash Oldsmobile at a car show in Massachusetts. MA requires a brake light on any car driven on the road whether it came with them or not (a good law IMO). Since they had to put a little motorcycle battery in the Olds for the lights, they also put a tape-deck (this was a while back) in it. I wonder what Ransom would have thought if he could have seen his little Oldsmobile a century later with a tape deck.
