Lansing, Michigan, is best known outside the automotive world as being the state capital, a designation it received in 1847 on the feeling that its central location (within the thickly settled lower peninsula) was more equitable than running things from Detroit — then and now Michigan’s largest city, but tucked away in the southeast corner of the state. Automobiles weren’t even so much as a pipe dream in a state filled with white pines waiting to be felled.

Read David Conwill’s story on RE Olds and the RE Olds Transport Museum in Lansing Michigan here