PENDLETON – Dennis Olson loves Oldsmobiles, but he’s driving the last new one he’ll ever buy.

That’s because the 2004 model Oldsmobiles were General Motors’ last. And just recently, the automaker ended its franchise with Comrie Chevrolet-Honda, the only Oldsmobile dealer in Umatilla County for nearly 70 years.

J.F. “Ferg” Comrie began his automobile repair shop, Red’s Precision Service, in Pendleton in 1929. Seven years later, in 1936, Comrie began selling cars, starting with Oldsmobile, the nation’s oldest carmaker. The company manufactured its first vehicles in 1897 and began the nation’s first assembly line in 1901.

Comrie’s original dealership was in the 300 block of Southeast Court Avenue. Roy Comrie remembered that his dad repaired cars during the daytime and used his evenings to “go out and sell” them.

Three years later Ferg Comrie expanded again, adding GMC trucks, and moving to Southeast Fifth and Court.

In 1958, Roy Comrie, Ferg’s son, returned to Pendleton and became general manager. In 1986, Roy’s son, Paul, became general manager of the business.

“I hate to see Oldsmobile quit. We drove ’em all the time when I was a kid,” Roy Comrie said, adding that the first one he owned was a 1951 model.

The Comrie family has had the General Motors automobile dealership in Pendleton for all but seven years since his dad started it in 1936, Roy Comrie said. His father sold the business in 1951, but it changed hands four times in the next seven years before Ferg Comrie bought it back and asked Roy to come home from the Midwest and join him in the business.

Olson, who with his wife, Linda, are partners in The Health Nuts, bought the last Oldsmobile Comrie sold, a 2003 Olds Aurora sedan, in August 2003. He has owned Oldsmobiles for nearly 30 years. His last six cars have been Oldsmobiles, and he bought the last five at Comrie.

“The last two have been Auroras, actually,” Olson said, adding they were the “top-of-the-line Olds sedan. “It’s been a wonderful road car. We really enjoy it.”

The family’s first was a “big, green Oldsmobile station wagon,” Olson said, which they bought in 1977.

“That’s when our kids were little, and so the nice, big station wagon was very handy for hauling the kids around to all their things,” he said.

The Olsons later owned two Oldsmobile Cieras, then an Olds 88, a big red sedan they bought in 1994.

“I think of all of them, that was our favorite. It was just really a comfortable car,” Olson said. “Oldsmobile is just a very good quality, dependable car. My father always bought GM cars, and I guess I just followed suit.”