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Durant
- One night in 1907, Durant received a phone call about a large automobile merger put together by financier J.P. Morgan. Weeks later, Durant held a meeting in his room at the original Pontchartrain Hotel, together with three other automotive leaders. They were Henry Ford, Ransom Olds of REO, and Ben Briscoe of Maxwell-Briscoe.
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Original 1904 Buick prototype in Flint at the beginning of its test run to Detroit and back. Durant was a millionaire at age 40, and he was eager for new adventures. With the Durant-Dort Carriage Company running smoothly, Durant was becoming bored. He liked to create organizations.
William Crapo Durant (December 8, 1861 – March 18, 1947) was a leading pioneer of the United States automobile industry, founder of General Motors and co-founder of Chevrolet. He created a system in which a company held multiple marques – each seemingly independent, with different automobile lines – bound under a unified corporate holding ...
Chevrolet Motor Company was consolidated into GM on May 2, 1918, and the same year GM acquired United Motors, a parts supplier founded by Durant and headed by Alfred P. Sloan for $45 million, and the McLaughlin Motor Car Company, founded by R. S. McLaughlin, became General Motors of Canada Limited.
Mar 1, 1998 · Burton W. Folsom. “Like father, like son,” runs the old adage. In the case of Billy Durant, the founder of General Motors, he was like his father and also his grandfather—even though the two men were polar opposites. The Durant story shows how family and entrepreneurship blended to start the largest car company in the world.
- James Mccandless
- Henry Ford. Though born on a Michigan farm in 1863, Henry Ford wanted nothing to do with farm life. He began tinkering with watches, working his way up to steam engines as an apprentice machinist.
- Kiichiro Toyoda. Hailing from an industrialist family in central Japan, Toyoyta's founder Kiichiro Toyoda was born in Shizuoka Prefecture in 1894. An engineer by training, Toyoda first worked for his family's textile business.
- Ferdinand Porsche. A child of the Bohemian region in the erstwhile Austro-Hungarian Empire (in an area that is now in the Czech Republic), Porsche was born in 1875.
- John Francis & Horace Elgin Dodge. Born four years apart in 1860s Michigan, the Dodge brothers were close from an early age. Older brother John was more business savvy while younger brother Horace took to tinkering.
Beginning with an investment in Buick in 1903, GM founder William "Billy" Durant quickly assembled the companies that became General Motors. GM was first incorporated on September 16, 1908, and within a few years would include familiar names such as Oldsmobile, Cadillac, and Oakland, which eventually became Pontiac.
Key Dates: 1892: R.E. Olds founds the Olds Motor Vehicle Company. 1895: The first Oldsmobile model is taken on its trial run. 1900: David Buick founds a factory in Detroit. 1902: Henry Leland produces the first Cadillac. 1903: William Durant forms General Motors Corporation, bringing together Oldsmobile and Buick.
