Ralph Lee Abraham: “today I rise to comment on a development that took place in my State this week. It was with great sadness that I heard…”

“today I rise to comment on a development that took place in my State this week. It was with great sadness that I heard of the phasing out of the Oldsmobile line of cars within the General Motors family. Over the last 105 years, Oldsmobile has been a Lansing, MI, and a State institution and, obviously, a national and international one as well. It was started 105 years ago when Ransom Eli Olds of Lansing, MI, teamed with Frank Clark, the son of a small carriage shop operator, to achieve what many believed impossible. They successfully produced a self-contained gasoline-powered carriage, and with it Oldsmobile was officially born in 1897. Throughout its history, Oldsmobile has enjoyed a number of firsts: the first assembly line; and with the production of the curved dash, the first mass producer of gasoline cars; in 1905, two Oldsmobiles finished the very first transcontinental race from New York to Portland, OR, in 45 days; in 1940, models featured the Hydra-Matic drive, making this lineup the first vehicles with fully automatic transmissions; in 1966, Oldsmobile introduced the Toronado, the first modern-day front-wheel drive car; in 1974, that Toronado became the first American car to offer a driver's side airbag. Millions of Americans have come to love their Oldsmobiles. An Olds convertible was the standard for transporting a Homecoming queen or a float parade when I was growing up. And an Oldsmobile sedan was the epitome of the middle-class family dream.…”