By Roselyn Fauth
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/THD18710816.2.15.5?items_per_page=100&query=Wai-iti&snippet=true&sort_by=byDA&title=SCANT%2CTEML%2CTHD%2CWDA
I love hunting through the South Canterbury Museum's online photo archive. Sometimes I am on a mission, and then I get side tracked... and that happened this morning. I was looking for a photo of a gate, and a friend sent me a link to a photo not only of the gate, but of a couple in the drive sitting in a motor car. Turns out, this was not simply a couple in a car... this snap shot was a glimpse of a town on the edge of change. The citation gave me a few clues and so I stqarted pawing through PapersPast to find out what an Oldsmobile could be.
Now I am not going to pretend I know much about cars, so to understand why this photo of a couple in a car matters, I needed to go look out wider, and learn about the beginning of the Oldsmobile story itself. So here we go, today's blog about a Timaru Herald advertisement of a car.
In 1897, Ransom E. Olds formed the Olds Motor Vehicle Company. After the business moved to Detroit and became Olds Motor Works, he began producing a small petrol car that would become famous as the Curved Dash Oldsmobile. The Detroit Historical Society describes the Detroit factory as the world’s first dedicated automobile production plant, and notes that Olds began mass production there using a stationary assembly line.
In 1901, a fire destroyed the Olds Motor Works factory in Detroit. Several prototype vehicles were lost, and the Curved Dash survived. The Henry Ford and the Detroit Historical Society both note that this small surviving design was the one Olds pushed into production. What might have been a disaster became the making of the marque.
That little Curved Dash mattered far beyond America. The Henry Ford describes it as a one-cylinder runabout sold for a relatively inexpensive $650, while the R.E. Olds Museum says it helped give legitimacy to the new automobile industry and is considered the first high-production automobile. By 1904 Oldsmobile was building thousands a year, and the Curved Dash had helped turn the motor car from experiment into a practical possibility for ordinary people.
And that is where the story comes home to Timaru.
On 30 July 1920, a Timaru Herald advertisement looked backwards and remembered one of the first cars on Timaru’s “motor horizon” as a 5 h.p. single-cylinder Oldsmobile bought by Frank Brown in 1902. It also said that Duncan Scott brought from the Old Country a 7 h.p. single-cylinder Oldsmobile in the same year. The advertisement was not written as a history article. It was written to sell cars. That is part of what makes it so interesting. It used memory as persuasion. It suggested that Oldsmobile had been there at the beginning of local motoring, and that this history made the brand worth trusting in 1920.
I love that, because it reminds us that the past survives in all sorts of places. Not only in official records or museum labels, but in advertisements, in community memory, in the stories people tell when they want to say, “We were there early. We knew this before it was common.”
By March 1920, R. C. Robinson’s Garage Royal in Sophia Street was already advertising that it was booking orders for the next shipment of Oldsmobile cars. By late October, Robinson was exhibiting a six-cylinder Oldsmobile at the Timaru show. In other words, the 1920 advertisement was doing something very clever. It linked the latest Oldsmobiles with the remembered prestige of the earliest ones.
That makes the photograph more powerful.
We do not know, from the image alone, who the couple were. We should not pretend otherwise. But we can say that the car itself was notable. If it was one of these very early Oldsmobiles, or a closely related early single-cylinder model, then it belonged to the years when the motor car was still new enough in Timaru to be remembered decades later in print. It was not notable because it was grand. It was notable because it was early. They tell us what a community notices first. They show us who could access change before others. They reveal how new technology enters everyday life, not in a neat textbook line, but in fits and starts, through curiosity, money, risk, status, and practicality. Who saw this little car and thought progress had arrived? Who rolled their eyes? Who wondered if such machines would ever replace horses? Who simply stood and stared?
That is why I do not see this as just a motoring story... I see it as a Timaru story.
This town had already been shaped by movement for generations: by Māori pathways and coastal knowledge, by surfboats and ships, by horses, drays, and rail. Each new form of transport changed the rhythm of life. A motor car did not simply add another option. It began to alter how people imagined distance, convenience, independence, and modernity. Once a machine like this appeared on local roads, the future no longer belonged only to large cities or overseas newspapers. It had arrived here too.
And yet the story does not stay tidy.
In 1929, the Timaru Herald referred to a model of the first Oldsmobile sold in Timaru as dating from 1904, not 1902. That discrepancy matters. It reminds us that memory can shift, that promotional claims can simplify, and that history often survives in overlapping versions rather than one perfectly settled account. I do not think that weakens the story. I think it deepens it. Good local history is not about pretending every loose end is tied up. It is about noticing the loose ends and asking why they exist.
There is another arc here too. Oldsmobile itself did not remain a tiny pioneer maker forever. The Henry Ford notes that General Motors bought the company in 1908 and kept the Oldsmobile brand alive until 2004. That gives this little car in the photograph an even bigger resonance. What we may be looking at is not only one of Timaru’s earliest remembered motor cars, but part of the earliest chapter of a brand that would endure for more than a century.
So what do we do with a photograph like this now? We could admire it as quaint and move on. We could say how charming the car looks, how formal the couple appear, how different the world was. But that would be too easy, and I think it would miss the real gift of the image. Its real gift I think is perspective. It reminds us that the past was once full of uncertainty too. People in early Timaru were also living through rapid change. They were also negotiating new technology, new choices, new inequalities, and new ways of moving through the world. They were not standing safely at the end of history. They were in the middle of it, just as we are.
That matters because it stops us treating history as a place we visit simply to feel nostalgic. Instead, it becomes a tool. It helps us ask better questions now. When something new enters our own lives, who gets access first? Who is expected to adapt? What do we call progress, and who gets to define it? Which changes truly make life better, and which simply arrive wrapped in the language of improvement?
The little Oldsmobile in this photograph cannot answer all of that, of course. But it does invite us to think.
It invites us to see that ordinary local images can hold international stories. That one small car in Timaru can connect us to industrial change in Detroit, to the rise of mass production, to the selling of modernity, and to the way a community learns to live with new technology. It reminds us that the future does not always arrive with fanfare. Sometimes it arrives quietly, in a small single-cylinder machine, and sits patiently for a photograph.
That is what I love about local history. The smallest image can open the biggest door. Maybe that is the real value of looking closely at the past. Not so we can stay there, but so we can return to the present a little wiser. A little more thoughtful. A little more alert to the fact that the lives we live now are also being shaped by new horizons, and that one day, someone may look back at our own ordinary photographs and realise they were looking at a turning point too.
Sources
Image shared by Roselyn Fauth
Timaru Herald, Issue 170283, 30 July 1920, page 4, advertisement image featuring the Oldsmobile reference. Transcription taken from the image you supplied in this conversation.
Timaru Herald, 4 March 1920, page 5, advertisement
R. C. Robinson’s Garage Royal advertised that it was “now booking orders for the next shipment of Oldsmobile cars.”
Timaru Herald, 29 October 1920, show report / report snippet
Papers Past search result noting that Mr Robinson of Garage Royal exhibited “a six-cylinder Oldsmobile” at that year’s show.
Timaru Herald, 6 August 1929, “Ploughing Match”
Report stating that alongside 1929 vehicles there was “a model of the first Oldsmobile sold in Timaru right back in 1904.”
The Henry Ford, “The Curved Dash Oldsmobile”
Used for the Curved Dash’s role as a one-cylinder affordable runabout, its $650 price, its popularity, the 1901 fire story, and the note that General Motors bought the company in 1908 and kept the brand alive until 2004.
Detroit Historical Society, “Olds, Ransom E.”
Used for Ransom E. Olds founding the company in 1897, the Detroit factory as the world’s first dedicated automobile production plant, the stationary assembly line, the 1901 fire, and the Curved Dash’s early sales success.
R.E. Olds Museum, “The Curved Dash Oldsmobile”
Used for the Curved Dash as a cheaper and more dependable alternative to the horse, its role in legitimising the automobile industry, and its standing as the first high-production automobile.
Timeline
1897
Ransom E. Olds forms the Olds Motor Vehicle Company.
1899
The business moves to Detroit and becomes Olds Motor Works.
1901
The Curved Dash Oldsmobile goes into production. A fire destroys the Detroit factory, but the Curved Dash survives and becomes the company’s defining model.
1902
According to the 1920 Timaru Herald advertisement, Frank Brown buys a 5 h.p. single-cylinder Oldsmobile in Timaru, and Duncan Scott brings out a 7 h.p. single-cylinder Oldsmobile from the Old Country.
This is the local date claimed in the advertisement image supplied in this conversation.
1904
By this year, The Henry Ford notes Oldsmobile was building 5,000 Curved Dash cars annually.
1908
General Motors buys Oldsmobile.
4 March 1920
R. C. Robinson’s Garage Royal in Sophia Street advertises that it is booking orders for the next shipment of Oldsmobile cars.
30 July 1920
The Timaru Herald advertisement you shared looks back to the first cars on Timaru’s “motor horizon” and uses that memory to market new Oldsmobiles arriving through Robinson’s Garage Royal.
29 October 1920
A six-cylinder Oldsmobile is exhibited by Robinson at the Timaru show.
6 August 1929
The Timaru Herald refers to a model of the first Oldsmobile sold in Timaru as dating from 1904, introducing a small but important date puzzle into the local record.
2004
Oldsmobile as a brand comes to an end after more than a century.
The next richest improvement would be a separate targeted search on Frank Brown, Duncan Scott, and R. C. Robinson in Timaru records so the human side becomes sharper without guessing.