History books tell us the automobile started in Europe with inventors like Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz. That may be true for the “rich sons’ toy,” as Billy Durant scornfully called it. But the car industry we know today was born in America. And this is the car that did it: the Curved Dash Oldsmobile designed by Ransom E. Olds.
As you can see, it was little more than a wood and metal box on bicycle wheels, with a simple one cylinder engine beneath the seat and a tiller for steering.
Simple? Perhaps, but it took Ranny Olds more than a year to take it from a tinkerer’s concept to a product ready for mass production, with production drawings, specifications and tools.
The Trip
Comeback! describes how Olds unwittingly made it his life’s passion to destroy the business Billy created and made millions from. And how the two met at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York while Olds waited for the picture above.
What didn’t make the book was how Roy D. Chapin (who went on to found Hudson) was still an Olds test driver. He drove that frail little contraption from Detroit to New York for the show–the first time any automobile completed that feat.
On roads which didn’t exist. From Detroit he crossed Canada and returned to American territory at the Niagara Falls. That’s when the rains came and turned what roads there were to strips of mud. Desperate to get to the Show on time, Chapin resorted to the illegal: using a towpath.
The Erie Canal
The big thing in transportation at the time was the Erie Canal, which connected the Great Lakes to the Hudson River, and therefore with New York. Barges used the canal, towed by mules on the banks. The image below, from the Erie Canal website, shows how it worked.
Teams of mules used a path alongside the Canal to tow barges back and forth. These towpaths were the private property of the Erie Canal Company and, in contrast to what passed for public roads, well maintained. Chapin ignored legal niceties and tore down the towpath, upsetting mule teams and their drivers no end. He had the fastest means of transportation, however, and nobody could catch him.
The Curved Dash Hits Big
He made it to New York on time, but in New York City he had an accident, breaking an axle. It took him four hours to repair it and complete the few blocks to the hotel where R.E.O. anxiously waited for him. And where Billy met the newly famous Mr. Olds.
When Chapin did arrive, it was not without drama. The Waldorf-Astoria personnel refused Chapin admission–politely but firmly. Very firmly. No guest of their establishment would witness someone so muddy and dirty for any reason whatsoever. Desperate, he rushed around to the service entrance, charged through the hotel’s kitchen, followed by a phalanx of decorum enforcers.
The Curved Dash was cleaned up and became the star of the show. Newspapers gushed about the ground-breaking feat and encouraged people to witness the miracle mobile themselves. They did… and signed orders for over a thousand, the first time any automobile was sold in quantity.
Ranny Olds had broken the barrier and demonstrated that his car for the common man was durable and affordable. Finally, he was on his way to achieve his lifelong ambition: rid the roads of horses and their stinky leave-behinds.
Would the Curved Dash’s sudden popularity put an end to Billy’s riches and domination of the world’s vehicle industry? Well, you’ll have to read the book to find out. 🙂