General Motors is the second largest automaker in the world, founded in 1908 by William C. Durant. It has been a consistent innovator in automotive technology and employs over 250,000 people worldwide. After experiencing periods of prosperity and hardship, the company was bailed out by the federal government in 2008.
General Motors Corporation is the second largest automaker in the world, right after Toyota. It was founded in 1908 by William C. Durant, in Flint, Michigan, and has been a consistent innovator in automotive technology. General Motors employs more than 250,000 people worldwide, with total assets of approximately $149 billion United States Dollars (USD).
William C. Durant was an early automobile pioneer. He was the son of Michigan governor, Henry H. Crapo, and in 1890 had a successful horse-drawn carriage in Flint. In 1904 he was asked to become General Manager of Buick, a position he filled wholeheartedly. He got his break as manager of Buick by creating a holding company in 1908, which he dubbed the General Motors Company. This company then bought Oldsmobile, Cartercar, Ewing, Elmore, Cadillac and the company that would later be Pontiac.
The following year, Durant acquired Reliance Motor Truck Company and Rapid Motor Vehicle Company, which would eventually be the foundation of General Motors trucking. All of these purchases resulted in a fairly large debt, approximately $1 million dollars, which was held against Durant by the bankers who financed the company. As a result, Durant was removed from leadership in 1910 and formed Chevrolet. Using the resources he earned through Chevrolet, Durant organized a stock buyback in General Motors and in 1916 he reclaimed his position as general manager, taking Chevrolet with him. In 1920 Durant was permanently removed by Pierre S. Du Pont, who remained largely in control until about 1950.
During the 1920s, the General Motors Company expanded into a global market and built itself as a power, prestige, and options company. Unlike the Ford company, which focused on lower costs and lower prices, General Motors targeted consumers who had the money to spend on products with more features. In the late 1920s and 1930s, General Motors helped create the Greyhound bus lines, largely replacing the existing rail system, and bought trolley companies to replace them with city buses.
During World War II, the General Motors companies produced a large number of armaments and military vehicles, for both Allied and Axis forces. Although at the time the company sought to distance itself from their German company Opel, it became apparent after the war that there had indeed been a concerted effort to profit from the German need for trucks, landmines and torpedoes. The vice president of the American branch of General Motors, Graeme K. Howard even expressed his staunch pro-Nazi views in his book, America and a New World Order.
After the war, General Motors continued to grow tremendously, quickly becoming the largest corporation in the United States. This period of unabashed prosperity, during which General Motors president Charles Erwin Wilson was appointed secretary of defense under Eisenhower, would last until the late 1950s. During the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, General Motors had a rough time, in which many of its products were attacked for poor workmanship, most notably the Chevrolet Corvair, about which Ralph Nader wrote his pivotal book, Unsafe at Any Speed.
The 1980s and 1990s were a time of continued hardship for General Motors, which was plagued by competition from Japanese companies. At the end of the 1990s it finally seemed to be on the road to recovery, with inventories increasing and sales stabilising. That all changed after September 11, 2001, when society started to falter again. For the next few years General Motors survived hardship after hardship, until the 2008 recession, at which point they seemed on the verge of bankruptcy and were eventually bailed out by the federal government, leaving their future uncertain.
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