10 Times Oldsmobile Was A Trendsetter In The Automotive Industry

Today, most people remember Oldsmobile as a now-defunct GM brand whose popularity slowly faded from the 80s onward, before eventually shutting down at the turn of the millennium. While that may be true, Oldsmobile’s earlier history is rich with innovation on all fronts: new manufacturing processes, mechanical advancements, and cutting-edge tech features.

The brand has claimed a very long list of automotive firsts over the course of its century-long history, setting trends that would go on to shape the automotive world. Here are ten times Oldsmobile introduced something new to the automotive industry, and permanently altered its course as a result.

First Automotive Assembly Line

The first achievement in automotive innovation Oldsmobile can claim for itself arrived in the very early days of car history. In 1901, only four years after Ransom E. Olds had founded the company that carried his name, the first model built on an assembly line arrived, revolutionizing car manufacturing forever. This was the Model R, also known as the “Curved Dash”.

Most people associate Henry Ford with the invention of the assembly line; while it’s true that Ford pioneered the moving assembly line structure we still use today, where cars move on a conveyor belt and workers remain stationary, Oldsmobile was the first to use an earlier type of assembly line - the static type - where unfinished cars remain in one station and workers move between then to complete different stages of assembly.

First Speedometer On A Production Car

In modern cars, we take speedometers for granted, alongside a host of other high-tech instruments and displays; however, like any other element of automotive technology, the speedometer was the result of a complex development process. The earliest example was a one-off device introduced in Paris in 1889, courtesy of Croatian inventor Josip Belusic; its mechanism was fairly rudimentary, based on a simple magnet-based system.

The first speedometer that more closely resembled modern ones, and the first to be installed on a production car, arrived in 1901 thanks to Oldsmobile. Once again, the Curved Dash is the model responsible for bringing about this innovation.

First Badge-Engineered Car

Today, badge engineering is a fairly common practice, where different marques owned by the same parent company share models with different branding, badging, and sometimes minor cosmetic differences. As a large conglomerate, GM is well known for using this approach, with several models being shared across different brands over the decades. Even today, vehicles like the GMC Sierra are badge-engineered and lightly restyled versions of the Chevrolet Silverado.

It is no surprise, then, that the very first recorded badge-engineered car in history was an Oldsmobile. The same year GM acquired Oldsmobile, along with Buick, the company began to sell a rebadged version of the Buick Model B, dubbed the Oldsmobile Series 20.

First Car Equipped With A Windshield As Standard

Drivers wearing goggles and gloves to protect themselves are an integral part of most people’s mental image of the early days of motoring. This is because protective equipment was a necessity in those days, with no physical barrier to prevent drivers and passengers from road debris and dust.

Of course, automakers began to design ways to implement protection devices on their cars, and the first vehicle equipped with a windshield arrived in 1904; however, Oldsmobile was the first brand to offer one as standard, rather than as an option. The first models to offer a standard windshield were the Six and the Model 43, in 1915.

First Fully Automatic Transmission On A Production Car

While some forms of partially automatic transmissions can be traced back to the start of the 20th century, Oldsmobile is responsible for the first fully automatic transmission to be installed on a mass-production car. The Automatic Safety Transmission, which arrived in 1937, evolved into the Hydra-Matic transmission, which made its debut in 1939.

The Hydra-Matic was developed jointly by Oldsmobile and Cadillac, and was made available as an option on the Oldsmobile Series 60 and Series 70; two years later, in 1941, Cadillac models began to offer this choice of gearbox as well. The Hydra-Matic proved to be a roaring success, staying in production for three decades and setting the standard for gearboxes in American cars (in 2023, only 1.7% of cars sold in the US had a manual gearbox).

First Muscle Car

When thinking about famous muscle cars, big names like the Ford Mustang, Pontiac GTO or Dodge Charger come to mind. However, these legends have a little-known ancestor that ushered in the muscle car era: combining striking looks with a thundering V8 engine, and marketed with an image of youthful freedom, the Oldsmobile 88 is considered by many to be the first model worthy of the “muscle car” title.

The car was soon nicknamed the Rocket 88 after the Rocket V8 engine that powered it; it also enjoyed a solid reputation in the world of motorsport thanks to its presence in NASCAR, which (among its many other qualities) contributed to the 88’s “fun and fast” image.

First Turbocharged Car

This technological leap forward was slightly ahead of its time, and is often forgotten due to the lukewarm reception it received when first revealed. While we’re inclined to think of turbocharging as being strongly associated with the 1980s, the first example of a production car with a turbo on board actually arrived two decades earlier: the Oldsmobile Jetfire, in 1962.

The Jetfire was a special version of the Cutlass, and only stuck around for one further model year due to poor sales. It shares the title of first turbocharged production car with one other GM model, the Chevrolet Corvair Monza, which went on sale in the same year.

First Commercially Available Car With Airbags

The idea of an air-filled bladder protecting a car’s occupants in the event of a collision has been around since the 1950s. However, response times were very slow, and the technology was fairly rudimentary; it took another two decades before an effective system was created, and it was GM who won that particular race.

In 1973, the “Air Cushion Restraint System” was installed on a fleet of government-owned Chevrolet Impalas; however, GM’s first model to offer airbags commercially was the Oldsmobile Toronado from the same year. Airbags gradually gained popularity over the course of the following decade, but it would be another 14 years before a car (the Porsche 944 Turbo) would offer them as standard, rather than as an option.

First Production Heads-Up Display

Oldsmobile did not just bring about mechanical innovations, but several technological ones too. The first car to be equipped with a head-up display was the 1988 Oldsmobile Cutlass, where a speedometer and turn-signal indicators were projected onto the windshield.

Head-up display (HUD) technology wasn’t new: like many features that eventually found their way into the automotive world, HUDs have their origin in the world of aviation, being first used in aircraft in the 1940s. GM first began adapting the technology for automotive use in the 1960s, but it wasn’t until two decades later that a functional unit was able to be developed and implemented in production models.

First American Car With An Onboard Navigation System

The system was called Guidestar, and was offered as an optional extra (at the not-insignificant price tag of $2,000) on the 1995 Oldsmobile 88. It was installed in the middle of the dashboard, and operated through a simple control unit that swivelled for easier access from both front seats.