Oldsmobile ran its first national automobile advertisement in the Saturday Evening Post. Ransom Olds was no stranger to innovations in the field of publicity. A year earlier, Olds had sent one of his assistants, Roy Chapin, on a voyage from Detroit to New York in a 1901 Olds Runabout. In spite of the absence of proper roads, gas stations, or repair garages, nine days and 800 miles later, Chapin arrived at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel unscathed. Newspaper accounts of the journey boosted publicity for the Runabout. In one year, Olds' company increased its sales of Runabouts from 425 to 2,500. With the help of newspaper advertisements annual sales would jump another 100 percent to 5,000 cars by 1904.
