Ransom Eli Olds is one of the founding fathers of the American automobile industry. His Curved Dash Oldsmobile was America’s first mass-produced low-priced automobile and the first to be produced on an assembly line (not to be confused with Henry Ford’s moving assembly line). In 1904, following a falling out with management, Olds left the company that bore his name, and founded the R. E. Olds Motor Car Company, which he quickly changed to REO Motor Car Co. to avoid legal action.

The new REO company continued building relatively affordable small cars of high quality. Along with car production, the company expanded into building trucks which proved very profitable. Despite offering beautiful and advanced cars such as the Royale and Flying Cloud, the company quit car production after 1936 to concentrate on trucks and buses. Following a merger with Diamond T trucks, they would become Diamond-Reo in 1967, which survived until 1975.