Many of us lost a dear friend a few years ago

by Frank Kaiser, www.suddenlysenior.com

Many of us lost a dear friend a few years ago as the final Oldsmobile rolled off the Lansing assembly line.  The oldest automotive brand name in US history died at age 106.

My grandfather owned our family's first Olds, a 1941 two-door, two-tone with Hydra-Matic transmission. Grandpa had lost the use of his left leg after a stroke.  This new clutchless and "shiftless" auto was just what the doctor ordered.

Hydra-Matic, introduced in 1940, still attracted the curious.  I recall total strangers poking their heads through the open car window, staring at the void where the clutch petal should have been, then shaking their heads in disbelief.

Automatic shifting was one of many Oldsmobile innovations starting with Oldsmobile as the first low-cost, mass-produced auto in the world.

When General Motors bought Ransom Olds out in 1908, the Oldsmobile line became GM's vanguard, its coolest brand. Steel wheels, hydraulic brakes, independent front-wheel suspension, the first 4-door hardtop, Autronic Eye, air conditioning, four-barrel carburetors, front-wheel drive — even the first airbag was introduced by Oldsmobile.

Changing to automatic transmission was perhaps the most difficult adjustment for drivers to make.  To drive his father's Hydra-Matic, my dad placed a block of wood where the clutch should have been to prevent him from banging his foot into the floorboard.

Soon Dad got hooked. Following war's end he traded his '41 Chevy, the window papered with gasoline "C" stickers, for a brand new '46 Olds.  My father, impaired as a result of childhood rheumatoid arthritis, wore huge, clumsy shoes. Once he got used to it, "clutchless" driving was a blessing.

Riding a tide of postwar prosperity, and with an Oldsmobile dealer client for his accounting business, my dad bought a new Olds every year until his death in 1974. (Oh, there was his brief fling with a '59 Caddie convertible [see  www.suddenlysenior.com/fathersaffair.html], but my mother nipped that in the bud.
I learned to drive in my father's blue '49 "Rocket 88" V-8 Olds.

And it was quick: Zero to 60 in less than eight seconds.  And fast!

One evening shortly after I got my driver's license, I was pushing the speedometer way passed 100 mph when I ran an unforeseen stop sign barely missing another driver on an otherwise empty country road. I was 15.  I never drove that fast or that irresponsibly again.