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N0KFQ > TODAY 16.09.14 16:20l 57 Lines 2643 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 36017_N0KFQ
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Subj: Today in History - Sep 16
Path: IW8PGT<IZ3LSV<I0OJJ<N6RME<N0KFQ
Sent: 140916/1415Z 36017@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.4.60
Sep 16, 1908:
William Durant creates General Motors
On September 16, 1908, Buick Motor Company head William Crapo
Durant spends $2,000 to incorporate General Motors in New Jersey.
Durant, a high-school dropout, had made his fortune building
horse-drawn carriages, and in fact he hated cars--he thought they
were noisy, smelly, and dangerous. Nevertheless, the giant
company he built would dominate the American auto industry for
decades.
In the first years of the 20th century, however, that industry
was a mess. There were about 45 different car companies in the
United States, most of which sold only a handful of cars each
year (and many of which had an unpleasant tendency to take
customers' down payments and then go out of business before
delivering a completed automobile). Industrialist Benjamin
Briscoe called this way of doing business "manufacturing
gambling," and he proposed a better idea. To build consumer
confidence and drive the weakest car companies out of business,
he wanted to consolidate the largest and most reliable
manufacturers (Ford, REO, his own Maxwell-Briscoe, and Durant's
Buick) into one big company. This idea appealed to Durant (though
not to Henry Ford or REO's Ransom E. Olds), who had made his
millions in the carriage business just that way: Instead of
selling one kind of vehicle to one kind of customer, Durant's
company had sold carriages and carts of all kinds, from the
utilitarian to the luxurious.
But Briscoe wanted to merge all the companies completely into
one, while Durant wanted to build a holding company that would
leave its individual parts more or less alone. ("Durant is for
states' rights," Briscoe said. "I am for a union.") Durant got
his way, and the new GM was the opposite of Ford: Instead of just
making one car, like the Model T, it produced a wide variety of
cars for a wide variety of buyers. In its first two years, GM
cobbled together 30 companies, including 11 automakers like
Oldsmobile, Cadillac, and Oakland (which later became Pontiac),
some supplier firms, and even an electric company.
Buying all these companies was too expensive for the fledgling
GM, and in 1911 the corporation's board forced the spendthrift
Durant to quit. He started a new car company with the Chevrolet
brothers and was able to buy enough GM stock to regain control of
the corporation in 1916, but his profligate ways got the better
of him and he was forced out again in 1920. During the
Depression, Durant went bankrupt, and he spent his last years
managing a bowling alley in Flint.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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