General Motors

• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The Carriage Maker's Vision: William C. Durant's Automotive Gambit
• Chapter 2 A Portfolio of Power: Forging an Empire with Buick, Cadillac, and Oldsmobile
• Chapter 3 The Sloan Era: A Car for Every Purse and Purpose
• Chapter 4 The Roaring Twenties: Ascendancy and the Surpassing of Ford
• Chapter 5 Global Reach: Expansion into Europe with Opel and Vauxhall
• Chapter 6 The Arsenal of Democracy: General Motors' Role in World War II
• Chapter 7 Post-War Prosperity: The Golden Age of American Motoring
• Chapter 8 Harley Earl and the Dream Machine: The Art and Color Section
• Chapter 9 Labor and the Line: The Rise of the UAW and the Treaty of Detroit
• Chapter 10 The Corvair Controversy: Ralph Nader and the Dawn of Auto Safety Regulation
• Chapter 11 Facing the East: The Challenge of Japanese Imports
• Chapter 12 Diversification and Distraction: From Data Systems to Hughes Aircraft
• Chapter 13 The Saturn Project: A New Kind of Car Company?
• Chapter 14 The SUV Boom: Profits and Perils in a Changing Market
• Chapter 15 A Global Giant Stumbles: The Road to Financial Crisis
• Chapter 16 The Unthinkable: Bankruptcy and the Government Bailout
• Chapter 17 The New GM: Restructuring and Rebirth
• Chapter 18 Mary Barra at the Helm: A New Era of Leadership
• Chapter 19 The Ignition Switch Crisis: A Scandal and Its Aftermath
• Chapter 20 Culling the Herd: The End of Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Saturn
• Chapter 21 The Electric Shock: From the EV1 to the Chevrolet Bolt
• Chapter 22 The Ultium Platform: Betting the Company on an All-Electric Future
• Chapter 23 Cruise Control: The Quest for Autonomous Driving
• Chapter 24 The Modern Portfolio: Redefining Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac
• Chapter 25 General Motors in the 21st Century: Navigating a Shifting Global Landscape

To tell the story of General Motors is to tell a story of America. It is a narrative woven into the very fabric of the 20th and 21st centuries, a sprawling epic of ambition, innovation, hubris, and reinvention. For much of its existence, the axiom "As GM goes, so goes the nation" was not mere hyperbole; it was a reflection of the company's immense scale and its profound influence on the American economy, culture, and landscape. At its zenith, General Motors was not just the world's largest automaker; it was the largest industrial corporation on Earth, a global behemoth whose operations spanned continents and whose products touched the lives of millions. It was a company that put America on wheels, shaped the modern suburb, helped win a world war, and defined the very concept of the corporate ladder.

The tale begins not with a methodical engineer, but with a consummate salesman and audacious visionary: William C. "Billy" Durant. A high-school dropout who made his fortune manufacturing horse-drawn carriages, Durant was initially skeptical of the noisy, unreliable "horseless carriage." Yet, he possessed an uncanny ability to see the future, and in the fledgling automobile industry, he saw an opportunity of unprecedented scale. In 1908, using his already successful Buick Motor Company as a foundation, Durant incorporated General Motors. What followed was a whirlwind of acquisitions, as Durant, driven by a belief in consolidation, rapidly bought up more than 20 distinct companies, including Oldsmobile, Cadillac, and the precursor to Pontiac, creating a chaotic but formidable automotive empire.

Durant's genius was in his grand vision, but his frenetic, seat-of-the-pants management style twice led to his ouster from the company he created. His replacement, Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., was his temperamental opposite. Where Durant was impulsive, Sloan was methodical. Where Durant thrived on chaos, Sloan craved order. An engineer by training, Sloan was an administrative mastermind who took Durant's sprawling, disconnected collection of companies and forged them into the model of the modern American corporation. He instituted principles of decentralized operations and centralized financial control, creating a structure that would be emulated by industries far beyond automaking.

It was Sloan who conceived of the strategy that would propel GM past its archrival, Ford, and establish its market dominance for the better part of a century. Rejecting Henry Ford's one-size-fits-all approach with the Model T, Sloan articulated a new vision: "a car for every purse and purpose." Under this doctrine, GM's brands were meticulously arranged in a "ladder of success." A customer might start with an affordable Chevrolet, and as their prosperity grew, they could move up to a Pontiac, an Oldsmobile, a Buick, and finally, the pinnacle of American luxury, a Cadillac. This, combined with the novel concepts of annual model changes—what would later be termed planned obsolescence—and the creation of the General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC) to provide consumer financing, transformed the automotive market and cemented GM's position at the top.

The sheer might of General Motors became an integral part of the American century. During World War II, the company transformed its vast manufacturing capabilities into the "Arsenal of Democracy," ceasing all civilian vehicle production to churn out an astonishing volume of aircraft, tanks, and armaments for the Allied forces. The post-war years ushered in a golden age, as a prosperous America embraced the open road. GM was there to provide the dream machines, guided by the flamboyant design chief Harley Earl, whose "Art and Color Section" translated the optimism of the era into chrome-laden, tail-finned fantasies like the Chevrolet Bel Air and the Cadillac Eldorado.

Yet, this unparalleled success bred a culture of insularity and bureaucracy that would eventually prove to be a profound weakness. The company's immense size made it slow to react to shifting tides. The rise of organized labor, culminating in the power of the United Auto Workers (UAW), created a new dynamic between management and the assembly line. In the 1960s, a young consumer advocate named Ralph Nader took aim at the Chevrolet Corvair, and his book, Unsafe at Any Speed, thrust automotive safety into the national spotlight, ushering in an era of government regulation that the industry had long resisted.

The challenges continued to mount. The oil crises of the 1970s exposed GM's vulnerability and its overreliance on large, fuel-thirsty vehicles. Simultaneously, a new wave of competition from Japanese automakers offering smaller, more fuel-efficient, and increasingly reliable cars began to steadily erode GM's market share. The company's attempts to respond, such as the ambitious but ultimately troubled Saturn Project, were often a case of too little, too late. A period of diversification saw the company venture into disparate fields, acquiring companies like Electronic Data Systems and Hughes Aircraft, moves that some critics argued distracted from the core business of building better cars.

The dawn of the 21st century saw the global giant stumble badly. Crushing legacy costs, a sprawling and often overlapping brand portfolio, and an inability to adapt quickly enough to a changing global market led to a period of profound crisis. The SUV boom of the 1990s had brought significant profits, but it also masked deeper structural problems. The unthinkable happened in 2009 when, battered by the global financial crisis, General Motors Corporation filed for bankruptcy, the largest industrial bankruptcy in U.S. history.

What emerged from the ashes, after a controversial government bailout and a lightning-fast 40-day restructuring, was the "New GM." Leaner and more focused, the company shed iconic brands like Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Saturn to concentrate on its core four: Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac. The path forward, however, was not without its own severe trials. A new era of leadership began with the appointment of Mary Barra, the first female CEO of a major global automaker, whose tenure was immediately tested by the massive and tragic ignition switch scandal.

Today, General Motors stands at another historic crossroads, navigating the most profound technological shift in the industry's history since its inception. Having pioneered and then abandoned one of the first modern electric cars, the EV1, the company is now betting its future on an all-electric world. With massive investments in its Ultium battery platform and a pledge to phase out gasoline-powered vehicles, GM is in a high-stakes race to define the future of mobility. At the same time, its Cruise division is at the forefront of the quest for autonomous driving, a technology that promises to once again reshape our cities and our lives.

This book is a portrait of that century-long journey. It is the story of the people, the products, and the pivotal moments that made General Motors an emblem of American industry. It chronicles the company's meteoric rise, its stunning fall, and its ongoing struggle for redemption and relevance in a rapidly changing world. It is a story of immense triumphs and staggering failures, of groundbreaking innovation and stubborn resistance to change. It is, in short, the story of a company that is as complex, contradictory, and compelling as the nation it helped to build.

The man who would assemble the largest industrial corporation on Earth did not begin his career with a love for the automobile. In fact, he wouldn't even let his daughter ride in one. William Crapo "Billy" Durant, a high-school dropout born in Boston and raised in Flint, Michigan, was a titan of a dying industry. His domain was not the machine shop but the carriage works. He was a natural salesman, a promoter of the highest order, whose first job selling cigars saw him single-handedly outsell three other salesmen combined. In 1886, a chance ride in a patented two-wheeled cart with a novel spring suspension so impressed him that he immediately sought out its creator and, with a partner, Josiah Dallas Dort, bought the company.

From this modest beginning, the Durant-Dort Carriage Company was born. Durant and Dort were a formidable pair; Durant the visionary salesman and Dort the steadying administrative hand. Within 15 years, their initial $2,000 investment had blossomed into a $2 million enterprise that was the largest manufacturer of horse-drawn vehicles in the United States, and by the turn of the century, the world. They produced over 50,000 vehicles a year, not just assembling them but controlling the ecosystem, owning everything from the timberlands that provided the wood to the factories that produced the wheels, axles, and varnish. Billy Durant was the undisputed king of the horse and buggy, and for a time, that was enough.

In the early 1900s, Durant viewed the sputtering, noisy "horseless carriage" with deep skepticism, considering the contraptions smelly, dangerous, and a menace to horses and people alike. This was a common view. The automobile was a novelty, a toy for the wealthy, and the industry was a chaotic mess of some 45 different companies, many of which were prone to taking customer deposits and promptly going out of business. An industrialist of the era aptly called it "manufacturing gambling." Yet, Flint was known as "Vehicle City," and its civic leaders were anxious to maintain that title as the world shifted from animal power to engine power. One of these men, James H. Whiting, had bought the struggling Buick Motor Company to keep it in Flint but knew he needed a man of immense talent and energy to make it succeed.

Initially, Durant was not interested. But after repeated entreaties, and perhaps spurred by boredom with the smoothly running carriage business, he agreed to test the machine that was causing all the fuss. He took a Buick out on the rough country roads around Flint and drove it for weeks. What he discovered was not a flimsy toy but a robust and capable vehicle. The experience transformed him. The carriage maker saw the future, and it was powered by gasoline. In November 1904, he took control of the Buick Motor Company. Applying the same relentless promotional energy that had sold hundreds of thousands of carriages, Durant turned the nearly bankrupt Buick into a phenomenon. He was a master marketer, leveraging racing victories to build a reputation for power and reliability. By 1908, Buick was the number one automobile producer in America, surpassing the combined output of Ford and Cadillac.

For Durant, however, building the most successful car company in America was not the end game; it was merely the opening move. Drawing on his experience in the carriage trade, he believed that the future lay not with a single company making a single product, but with a large, consolidated enterprise offering a variety of vehicles for different tastes and incomes. This was a direct contrast to Henry Ford's rigid focus on a single model. Durant envisioned a holding company that would acquire the best and most promising automakers, allowing them to operate with a degree of autonomy while benefiting from shared resources and centralized financial control.

His first attempt at this grand consolidation involved the industry's heavyweights. In 1907, Durant met with Benjamin Briscoe of Maxwell-Briscoe, Ransom E. Olds of REO, and Henry Ford to discuss a massive merger. The deal, however, collapsed. Henry Ford, ever the individualist, demanded to be paid in cash, not stock, and the financiers balked. Undeterred, Durant decided to build his empire alone, using the immensely profitable Buick as his foundation. He knew another manufacturer, Oldsmobile, was in financial trouble. Wasting no time, he took a night train to Lansing, roused the company's officials from their beds, and pitched his idea for a new holding company.

On September 16, 1908, with an initial investment of just $2,000, William Durant incorporated the General Motors Company in New Jersey. Its first asset was the Buick Motor Company. Just a few weeks later, on November 12, Olds Motor Works (Oldsmobile) officially became the second. This was the beginning of an acquisition spree of breathtaking speed and scope. In less than two years, Durant brought more than 20 companies into the General Motors fold. This wasn't a carefully curated collection; it was a chaotic accumulation. Durant bought whatever he thought had potential, from established automakers to speculative startups with unproven technologies.

He bought the Oakland Motor Car Company of Pontiac, Michigan, which would one day become Pontiac. He purchased truck makers Rapid Motor Vehicle Company and Reliance Motor Car Company, the predecessors of GMC. He bought companies with odd technologies that caught his fancy, like the Cartercar, which featured a friction-drive transmission. Durant later defended the ill-fated purchase by saying, "How was anyone to know that Carter wasn't to be the thing?" He also vertically integrated, just as he had with Durant-Dort, buying up crucial suppliers of parts and accessories like AC Spark Plug.

Amidst this whirlwind of acquisitions, one purchase stood out as a stroke of genius. In July 1909, Durant set his sights on the Cadillac Automobile Company. Founded by the brilliant and notoriously precise engineer Henry M. Leland from the ashes of Henry Ford's second failed venture, Cadillac had quickly established a reputation for unparalleled quality and reliability. Leland, a master of precision manufacturing, had created the "Standard of the World." Durant persuaded Leland to sell for $4.5 million in GM stock, promising that Leland and his son would remain in their management roles. The acquisition gave Durant's nascent, sprawling empire a crown jewel of engineering excellence and prestige.

Durant’s gambit was audacious, but it was built on a foundation of debt. His relentless expansion, fueled more by vision than by available capital, stretched General Motors' finances to the breaking point. Many of the companies he had purchased were not profitable, and the sheer cost of the acquisitions created a massive cash shortage. By 1910, the market for large, expensive cars had softened, while Henry Ford’s cheap and reliable Model T was gaining unstoppable momentum. GM, with its dizzying array of 21 different models from ten largely independent divisions, was ill-equipped to compete. The bankers who had financed Durant's buying spree became alarmed.

The visionary's image quickly transformed from that of a genius to a reckless speculator. To secure the loans necessary to keep the company afloat, Durant had no choice but to cede control to a bankers' trust. On September 26, 1910, exactly two years and ten days after he had created it, William C. Durant was forced out of General Motors. The carriage maker who had seen the future and willed an industrial empire into existence was suddenly on the outside looking in. But as the bankers would soon learn, Billy Durant was far from finished.