1911 Oldsmobile Sold For Record $5 Million

It’s been more than 20 years now since the Oldsmobile brand was discontinued, but one of its cars much older than that just set an all-time record.

A 1911 Oldsmobile Limited Series 27 Seven-Passenger Touring was recently sold at auction for $5,065,000, which is the highest price ever publicly paid for one of the brand’s cars.

The brass era auto was a short-lived luxury model the brand offered before shifting toward mainstream vehicles.

It was the most expensive car built by a General Motors-owned make at the time and sold for approximately $5,000, according to the Gooding Christies auction house. That was around five-times more than a Ford Model T and equivalent to $150,000 today.

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It has seven seats across three rows, which is not unlike today’s SUVs, except for the fact that it is an open-top vehicle with a folding roof.

The engine is a monstrous 707-cubic-inch inline six-cylinder officially rated at 60 hp. Power is sent to the rear wheels through a four-speed manual transmission and it rides on solid axles and leaf-spring suspensions on both ends.

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Oldsmobile built fewer than 800 from 1910 to 1912 and there are only 10 that are known to still exist. This record-setting example largely original, but was thoroughly restored in 1945.

It has won several awards at car shows, including the 2006 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance Ansel Adams Award. The pre-auction estimate was just $1.5 million to $2.5 million, so it far surpassed expectations. The brand’s previous auction record was $3.3 million for a 1912 Limited in 2012.

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