 
(Left: One of the first production Oldsmobiles, picture from the Michigan Historical Museum. Right: The last production Oldsmobile, the Alero. Picture from USA Today website.)
Hi everybody. It’s good to be back in Blogland. A lot of things have happened since I last posted, most of which have been covered better elsewhere. I only want to mention one thing in particular:
The last Oldsmobile ever came off the line last Thursday here in Lansing. Oldsmobile was the oldest still-existing car line.
This particularly hits us hard, as in many ways, Lansing is the town that Olds built. Ransom Eli Olds invented his first steam-powered car here in 1886 (then referred to by the anachronistic “horseless carriage”). Later, he built gasoline-powered cars and successfully demonstrated them in 1896. The next year, he began the Olds Motor Vehicle Company (his investors would also go on to play an important role in the city). He sold the company to General Motors in 1908. Still, Olds and his company remained in the city. The Oldsmobile headquarters were based in Lansing up until the early 1990’s, when they were merged with GM’s Detroit headquarters. Nearly half of all Oldsmobiles in existence came out of one of the Lansing factories. Olds also contributed money to the building of a new engineering building on the Michigan State College campus after the old one burned (MSU alums will recognize it as Olds Hall, next to the library).
The last Olds ever produced, an Alero, has been signed by the assembly line workers. It will be displayed until the end of May at the R.E. Olds Transportation Museum.
10:02:23 PM 
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