America's oldest manufacturer of automobiles up to the time of its demise in 2004, Oldsmobile was founded in Lansing, Michigan in 1897 by Ransom Eli Olds, who had begun experimenting with powered transport in the late 1880s.

When the Olds Motor Works plant burned down in March 1901, the sole surviving prototype automobile was a single-cylinder runabout on which, of necessity, the firm's immediate attention would be focussed.

This was the famous 'curved dash' Oldsmobile, a simple design whose ruggedness and reliability were just what was need to encourage public confidence in the new-fangled 'horseless carriage'.

Production rose from 425 cars in 1901 to 5,508 in 1904; it was not without good reason that Olds contested Ford's claim to be the first mass-producer of automobiles.

Oldsmobile's range had expanded to include four-cylinder, six-cylinder and V8-engined models by the time America entered WWI.

Revived in 1921 as the Model 43-A, the four-cylinder Oldsmobile would be the compan...