A portion of Reo's 1917 line of carsThe Reo Motor Car Co. Ltd. was a United States based company which produced automobiles and motor trucks from 1905 to 1975.
Reo was founded by Ransom E. Olds in 1904 (the name of the founder also lived on in the Oldsmobile). The name is often spelled in all capitals, as REO, although the company's own advertising shows that this capitalization is not necessary.
Reo manufactured automobiles from 1905 to 1936, including the famous Reo Speed-Wagon, an ancestor of the pickup truck, which gave its name to the 1970s rock group REO Speedwagon.
Reo's moment in automotive history came with the introduction of the Reo Royale 8 of 1931. This was the car that introduced styling changes that were the precursor of true streamlining to the American market. The model continued to be made until 1933.
The company continued manuacturing trucks under the REO name and was acquired by the White Motor Company in 1960. Several corporate reorganizations followed and the last trucks were manufactured as Diamond REOs when production was halted in 1975. Meanwhile, the corporate shell reorganized in the 1930s after a bankruptcy and the end of automobile manufacturing went through a series of transmutations into the nuclear medicine and prefabricated housing businesses before becoming today's steel company Nucor.
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