By Maz Woolley
Oldsmobile Album Auto Review #197 by Rod Ward. English Text. 32 pages, with many colour and Black and white pictures. Softbound. Size 148 x 210 millimetres ISBN 978 1 85482 196 9. Available from Zeteo.Com or selected booksellers and museums.
The first of Rod Ward’s new books for 2024 have already come out, more details of the year’s programme can be found at zeteo.com.
Here we have another of his encyclopaedic trips through the history of a now obsolete brand from start to end. Here we also get side trips to Reo, Viking and Saturn which were all related to the Oldsmobile in some way.
Oldsmobile were the first mass-market car in US history with the sales of the curved dash and its successors providing simple and rugged transport in America before the Ford T arrived. The book tells of the cars developed over the years and their designers with plenty of background on Oldsmobile’s place in the GM family.
In 2004 the last Oldsmobile was built and shipped. A victim of the rapidly changing US Sales market and the fact that the glamour of the 4-4-2 had long been replaced by a rather non-descript product line up with little to differentiate it from the cheaper GM ranges.
The book is short but absolutely packed full with illustrations and text it is excellent value with a cover price of only 5.95 UK Pounds. It goes well with Rod’s other great marque histories, and we will be seeing two more US marques covered this year with books on Plymouth and Pontiac.
For those who are interested the Auto Review publication for 2024 is:
AR197 Oldsmobile Album. Including Reo, Viking and Saturn. Available NOW
AR198 Armour on Wheels. The story of wheeled armoured fighting vehicles. Available NOW
AR199 Cars produced in Latin America.Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and more. April 2024
AR200 Plymouth Album.Plus DeSoto, Fargo, Valiant. April 2024
AR201 Commercial Vehicle Album 2. Minor postwar UK Manufacturers. June 2024
AR202 They also made cars: Suzuki Album. Plus Isuzu, Hino and Daihatsu. June 2024
AR203 Pontiac Album. Plus the story of Oakland. September 2024
AR204 MAN.Including Büssing-NAG and more. September 2024
AR205Not just Volvo, Saab and Scania:The Other Nordics.Vehicles made in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Iceland. November 2024
AR206 The White Saga.Including Autocar, Freightliner, Reo, Diamond T, Western Star, Cletrac, Indiana, Sterling, Euclid. November 2024
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