once upon a long ago, when they called a car a limited, it actually was a very limited run. The 1911 Olds Limited had 159 made, the 1912 only had 140.

Bought new by a rich widow, it cost $5000, but her chauffeur couldn't keep it running very well. It was sold for about 600 in 1916ish. The new owner couldn't get it to operate very well either. With the 707 cubic inches, and very few mechanics being familiar with every make and model and how to tune them, it's not surprising.

The car sat in the garage a lot, and then the owner died, so it sat unused in the garage. When the nearby creek flooded, it was 1936, and the grandkids were given permission to clean it up, tear it down, and they puttered with it until 1943. Then the widow died and the car passed onto the William Swigart museum. They left the car untouched and unrestored in a spot high traffic demonstrating the rare unrestored car.

In 2007 it was auctioned off, at the peak of the car auction prices, and went for 1.6 million, by the JW Rich museum

these tires were bought NOS in 1963, and put on the car for it's first time under it's own power in 90 some years, and it was brought to the 2009 Pebble Beach Concours

images from http://www.conceptcarz.com/vehicle/z13521/Oldsmobile-Limited.aspx and http://www.jwrautomuseum.com/vehicles/1911ol.html taken by Michael Furman