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Show 18-Year Old Oriole Car Outlasts Owner Do you recall the Oakland 33 Oriole Speedster, whose low lines created a vogue back in 1911? Built a foot or two closer to the ground than its towering contemporary contempor-ary cars, the Oriole is credited with having sounded the knell of the high wheeled, top-heavy stemwindei s, whose brass-bound glory previously had been accepted as the last word in automotive design. The Oriole was radically new. It had wire wheels, open bucket seats leaning against a big cylindrical gas tank, an almost horizontal steering post and a hood strapped down over its big four-cylinder engine. The spare tire slanted rakishly aft. The car followed closely the lines of the racing machines of that day in as a used car by Fred O. Grimes, veteran garage man of Hillsboro, Texas. Through the intervening 17 years the Oriole wore out four speedometers speed-ometers with a total mileage aggregating aggre-gating many hundreds of thousands of miles. During recent years the Oriole was utilized as a service car with which Mr. Grimes rescued countless count-less cars from the mud roads in the I country surrounding Hillsboro. which Oldfield, DePalma, Tetzlaff and Harroun were competing at a speed of 00 to 70 miles an hour against such pilots as Bragg, Hughes and Bruce-Brown. Bruce-Brown. During 1911 Oakland built G73 of these rakish Oriole Speedsters, with the factory's limited production facilities always proving inadequate to meet demand. Some of the Orioles competed in the speed contests and road races that were popular from 1909 to 1914. One of them was purchased in 1912 But last week Mr. Grimes drove 1 the old Oriole Speedster to the Oakland Oak-land Pontiac salesroom at Hillsboro. "I'm afraid I'll have to turn her in ' on a new car,"he said. "We that is, the Oriole and myself have grown old together. And still not exactly that, because I've grown old faster than the car. It has outlasted me. It's I still in fine shape. But I'm not as spry as I was. I've reached the age where I appreciate the comforts of a closed car and a self-starter. |