Everything about Reo Motor Car Company totally explained
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The
REO Motor Car Company was a
Lansing,
Michigan-based company that produced
automobiles and
trucks from 1905 to 1975. At one point the company also manufactured buses on its truck platforms.
REO was founded by
Ransom E. Olds in August 1904 (the name of the founder also lived on in the
Oldsmobile). Olds held 52 percent of the stock and the titles of president and general manager. To ensure a reliable supply of parts, he organized a number of subsidiary firms like the
National Coil Company, the
Michigan Screw Company, and the
Atlas Drop Forge Company.
The company's name was alternately spelled in all capitals
REO or with only an initial capital as
Reo, and the company's own literature was inconsistent in this regard, with early advertising using all capitals and later
advertising using the "Reo" capitalization.
(External Link
) The pronunciation, however, was as a single word (like "rio"), never as letters (like the band "
R.E.O. Speedwagon").
Early REO production
REO manufactured automobiles from 1905 to 1936, including the
REO Speed Wagon light delivery truck, an ancestor of the
pickup truck.
By 1907, REO had gross sales of $4 million and the company was one of the top four automobile manufacturers in the U.S. After 1908 however, despite the introduction of improved cars designed by Olds, REO's share of the automobile market shrank due in part to competition from emerging giants like
Ford and
General Motors.
REO added a truck manufacturing division and a Canadian plant in
St. Catharines, Ontario in 1910. Two years later, Olds claimed he'd built the best car he could, a
tourer able to seat two, four, or five, with a 30-35 hp (22-26 kW) engine, 112 in (2845 mm)
wheelbase, and 32 inch (81 cm) wheels, for
US$1055 (not including top,
windshield, or gas tank, which were US$100 extra);
self-starter was US$25 on top of that. By comparison, the
Cole 30 and
Colt Runabout were priced at US$1500,
Kirk's Yale side-entrance US$1000, the high-volume
Oldsmobile Runabout wemt for US$650,
Western's Gale Model A was US$500, a
Brush Runabout US$485, the
Black started at $375, and the
Success hit the amazingly low US$250.
In 1915, Olds relinquished the title of general manager to his protégé
Richard H. Scott and eight years later he gave up the company's presidency as well, retaining the position of chairman of the board.
Perhaps the most famous REO episode was the 1912 Trans-Canada journey. Traveling 4,176 miles (6,720 km) from
Halifax,
Nova Scotia, to
Vancouver,
British Columbia, in a 1912 REO special touring car, mechanic/driver
Fonce V. (Jack) Haney and journalist
Thomas W. Wilby made the first trip by automobile across
Canada (including one short jaunt into northeastern Washington State when the Canadian roads were virtually impassable.)
From 1915 to 1925, under Scott's direction REO remained profitable. In 1925, however, Scott, like many of his comtemporaries/competitors, launched an ambitious expansion program designed to make the company more competitive with other automobile manufacturers by offering cars in different price ranges. The failure of this program and the effects of the Depression caused such heavy losses that Olds came out of retirement in 1933 and took control of REO again, but resigned in 1934. In 1936, REO abandoned the manufacture of automobiles to concentrate on trucks.
Reo Flying Cloud and Reo Royale
REO's two most memorable cars were its
Reo Flying Cloud introduced in 1927 and the
Reo Royale 8 of 1931.
The
Flying Cloud was the first car to use Lockheed's new hydraulic internal expanding brake system and featured styling by Fabio Segardi. While
Ned Jordan is credited with changing the way advertising copy was written with his "Somewhere West of Laramie" ads for his
Jordan Playboy, Reo's Flying Cloud - a name that provoked evocative images of speed and lightness - name changed the way automobiles would be named in the future. The final REO model in 1936 was a Flying Cloud.
The 1931 Reo
Royale was a trendsetting design, introducing design elements that set the stage for true automotive
streamlining in the American market. The model was built until 1935. Beverly Kimes, editor of the
Standard Catalog of American Cars, calls the Royale "the most fabulous Reo of all". In addition to its coachwork by Murray, the Royale also provided buyers with a straight-eight with a nine bearing crankshaft, one shot lubrication, and thermostatically controlled radiator shutters. The Royale rode upon factory wheelbases of 131 and ; a 1932 custom version rode upon a wheelbase. The Royale also featured REO's semi-automatic transmission, the Self-Shifter.
After passenger cars
Although World War II truck orders enabled it to make something of a comeback, the company remained unstable in the postwar era. In 1954 it was sold to the
Bohn Aluminum and Brass Company of Detroit, and in 1957 became a subsidiary of the
White Motor Company. White then merged REO with
Diamond T Trucks in 1967 to form
Diamond-Reo Trucks, Inc. In 1975, this firm filed for bankruptcy in the Western District of Michigan and most of its assets were liquidated.
Meanwhile, the corporate shell reorganized in the 1930s after a bankruptcy and the end of automobile manufacturing went through a series of transmutations into the
nuclear medicine and prefabricated housing businesses before becoming today's steel company
Nucor.
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