How To Advertise Cars By Making Horses Look Like Jerks: Cold Start

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In the early 20th century, when cars were just starting to be sold in real numbers, the competition wasn’t from other cars, be they steam, gasoline, electric, or gaint-spring-powered, but rather from biological sources. Yes, nature had a firm lock on the personal and commercial transportation industry with their very popular product, Equus ferus caballus, better known under the brand name horse. So how does one compete with such an established and entrenched player in the transportation space? Easy. You just need to convince people that horses are assholes. And that’s just what carmakers like Oldsmobile tried to do.

The Curved-Dash Olds, introduced in 1901, was a small two-passenger runabout with a 1560cc flat-one engine making five horsepower, making it a worthy adversary to the horse, which was also a two-passenger runabout that you’d think made just one horsepower, but in actuality could hit 15 hp in short bursts. Horses, unlike the Olds, had a mammalian brain that was capable of moods and feelings, including, as this old Oldsmoible ad pointed out, viciousness:

 

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I’ve never seen another ad for a car that pushes the lack of “visciousness” as the primary selling point. Also, the ad notes that the olds has “no uncertain disposition” and “no menace to life and limb” and no “uncontrollable temper.” Really, these are still fantastic qualities to look for in a car today. I’m told new cars as varied as the Kia Ioniq 6 and the Dacia Duster and the Tesla Model Y all feature a lack of an uncontrollable temper, too.

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That not enough for you? Well, what if your horse’s “uncertain temper, sudden fright, and unruly disposition” cause a horrible accident, all because you chose poorly, selecting 900 pounds of freaked-out muscular quad-hoofed asshole instead of “mechanical skill and mathematical exactness” that the Oldsmobile provides. A Curved Dash Olds won’t see something shiny and lose its shit and go stampeding into a crowd of people, but some idiot horse? Who knows?

What a way to advertise a car! It’s not alive! It can’t go bonkers on you!

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The Curved Dash Oldsmobile was a strange little car; first, it’s one of the only cars that is consistently referred to as model name first, then company name, which is weird enough, but it’s also the only mid-engined Oldsmobile. The Curved Dash was an interesting design, resembling a side-by-side more than a conventional car, partially because it was designed for America’s then-crappy road conditions. Look at that ground clearance!

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What a interesting little machine; no wonder they sold about 19,000 of these before the Ford Model T was even introduced. And it’s at least in part because it lacked an uncontrollable temper, among other things.

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Mercedes Streeter

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59 thoughts on “How To Advertise Cars By Making Horses Look Like Jerks: Cold Start”

  1. Well Wilbur, What’s it gonna be? You’re taking your newfangled software defined, epitome of modern transportation into town, that may emergency brake on an on ramp if it sees it’s shadow, or are you taking me, and I may go where you intend, or perhaps check out that new filly? The way I see it, it’s either a crap shoot, or a crap shooter.

  2. The other main problem with the horse is that you have to ‘fuel’ it every day. Even if you don’t drive it. Rather than a gaseous exhaust that dissipates into the atmosphere, horse exhaust is liquid and semisolid making disposal an issue.

  3. I’m told new cars as varied as the Kia Ioniq 6 and the Dacia Duster and the Tesla Model Y all feature a lack of an uncontrollable temper, too.

    Fixed that for ya. I wouldn’t put it past a Tesla product to develop a sudden and irrational hatred of parked emergency vehicles, cyclists, and pedestrians.

  4. Horses are definitely and justifiably jerks. I mean, as highly social prey animals with decent-sized brains who are often left isolated and bored, and whose primary defense mechanism is to freak out and run away, what else could they be?

    Some time, I’d love to see a “Retro-topian” edition with reviews of carriages, horse ride reports, penny-farthings, maybe a little offroad action with a draft horse and a plow…

    (Also, dogsledders are fun, weird people who don’t get nearly enough media love.)

    1. I grew up on a farm that raised cows and pigs. I had enough friends with horses that I dealt with them often enough. Cows were chill. They get in a routine and are good to go. They also don’t spook as easy. Though when they do, watch out. Pigs are leaps and bounds smarter than horses and cows. That makes them a huge pain in the ass.

  5. This was actually a kinda a problem back in the urbanization of the American city. Turns out, horses not big fans of urban environments. The horse getting spooked and going on a rampage down a sidewalk wasn’t like a daily occurrence, but it did happen almost every other day. In 1900 NYC, 200 people were killed by the horse, or horse-powered vehicle. Compared to 2023, 259 people killed by automobile. With 1900’s NYC population being around 7.2 million. And 2023 being around 19.5 million.

  6. As anyone who has ever read the 1877 novel by Anna Sewell, Black Beauty: His Grooms and Companions, the Autobiography of a Horse, knows all too well, life was not a bed of roses for so many horses in those days so those ads are perhaps being a bit disingenuous by casting horses rather than people as being vicious. Indeed, who could blame horses for being vicious given the way they were treated??
    Ha, it could be argued that despite all the pollution and roadkill the automobile has been a boon for horses (& other animals) so Ransom Olds was actually doing horses a favor by impugning their character.

  7. I miss Olds. My great grandpa was the factory manager at Saginaw Steering Gear, then later the Hydramatic division. He was an Olds man. I saw a picture of him in a debut year Toronado, and felt extreme jealousy.

  8. All God’s Creatures are basically jerks.

    They shit on your car
    They jump in front of you while you’re driving.
    They chew the wiring
    They set up house under the seats and piss all over
    They perch on your door sill, pecking at their reflections in the mirrors…

  9. I like the perfect explosion every time line too. It won’t bite you and guaranteed our explosions are perfect!
    But…horses don’t run on explosions….

    Maybe EVs can play up the lack of explosions? Sadly they can’t guarantee no fires…

  10. “and the Tesla Model Y all feature a lack of an uncontrollable temper, too.”

    Um, yeah, gonna have to sort of disagree with you on that?
    The Tesla-
    Traps you inside while receiving an update from the mothership
    Steers you into Jersey barriers on the expressway for no apparent reason
    Rams you into fire trucks
    Drives you into your pond on your ginormous Texas ranch and then won’t let you out and you drown.
    Seems like an uncontrollable temper to me.

    2. My Grandpa broke his arm when he was about 7 years old. Trying to crank start a car with little experience.

      He and his best friend were fixing’ to take a joy ride through NYC when the injury occurred.

      Later became a big supporter of batteries and starters.

  12. If it was me writing the ad, I would have added “…and unlike horses, our motorized carriage doesn’t leave mounds of shit everywhere”

  14. And yet, with the rise of unpredictable and dangerous level 2 autonomous driving, I feel as though we’re coming full circle.

  15. “Curved Dash” was a nickname borne from its styling, and there were several evolutions over the years. Officially the 1901-1903 version was the Model R, and since it was Oldsmobile’s only product at the time, per the ads one could just refer to it as “The Oldsmobile”.

    The Model R was a delightful little car, the first mass-produced automobile, and saved Oldsmobile from bankruptcy. They had a fire at the plant and the Model R was the only prototype they saved.

    I have always wanted one of these. I think they top out at about 20mph but that wouldn’t at all stop me from registering it and driving it to work on the regular. 100+ year old cars fascinate me, what an interesting time.

    1. That was a sticky convention too. It wasn’t until 1986 that all full-size Chevys were unified under the Caprice model nameplate and GM marketing fully abandoned the idea of “The Chevrolet” with midsize and compact models referred to as “by Chevrolet”.

      It was, of course, less sticky at Oldsmobile since by the mid-80s they’d been the Cutlass Division for some 15 years and they were branching out into different models on separate platforms carrying that name.

    3. Around these parts you’d definitely have to stay off the highways. In Maryland it’s illegal to drive on a highway if your vehicle isn’t capable of exceeding the speed limit by 10 mph.

  18. These seem less like ads for Oldsmobile and more like ads against horses. Honestly, I have to agree. Horses suck. They cost as much as cars and can’t even do burnouts.

        1. Actually *pushes up glasses* automotive exhaust is made of a number of materials, some of which are organic, some of which (e.g., nitrous oxides) are inorganic. Of course, while poop is mostly organic there are also some inorganic compounds present as well. So both substances are a mixture of organic and inorganic materials.

          Excuse me while I give myself a wedgie.

      1. You mean TINY EXPLOSIONS?! Yes, please!

        I like EVs and think they are the future. But there’s something fascinating and exciting about your weekly trip to the grocery store being powered by tens or hundreds of thousands of tiny dinosaur-fed explosions.

    1. I had one, and I disagree. They were sullen, to be sure. They were loud and the smoke was obnoxious, but not unruly. The only sudden thing to happen in an Oldsmobile Diesel was the failure of the engine…

  22. “uncertain temper, sudden fright, and unruly disposition” is how I have made it this far in life. Damn horses….maybe they should have highlighted the lack of excrement from the Olds. It writes itself!

  23. Ransom Olds didn’t just make cars at the time. He developed the town where I work, Oldsmar in Florida. He intended to make tractors and agricultural equipment but it wasn’t a big success, especially after a huge hurricane in the 20s. Apparently you can still see the foundations of his (also unsuccessful) oil well at the horse track.

    1. And 1 of 4 drivers are of “ uncertain disposition”, are a “menace to life and limb” and suffer from “uncontrollable temper” 

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