William Durant's GM: A Buggy Baron, Leaded Gas and a 2009 Bankruptcy

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

In 1900 William C. Durant ran the largest US maker of horse-drawn vehicles and openly disliked automobiles, but after buying into Buick around 1904 he formed General Motors in 1908 as a holding company and quickly added Oldsmobile, Cadillac and Oakland. In 1909 he nearly bought Ford for $8 million, but banks refused the $2 million down payment, and by 1910 the bankers had ousted him. He came back through Chevrolet, founded with racer Louis Chevrolet in 1911, retook control in 1917 and was pushed out for good in 1920 by Pierre S. du Pont. Alfred P. Sloan then built a price ladder from Chevrolet to Cadillac and introduced the annual model change.

GM produced Charles Kettering's 1911 electric starter and Thomas Midgley Jr.'s tetraethyl lead and CFCs; the 1936 to 1937 Flint sit-down strike won recognition for the UAW; and GM's German unit Opel supplied the Wehrmacht while its US plants armed the Allies. After the moon buggy and the first passenger airbag came the troubled Cadillac V8-6-4, a $750 million buyout of Ross Perot in 1986, the loss of the top-automaker title to Toyota in 2008, and a 2009 Chapter 11 filing with a government stake sold off by 2014. Under Mary Barra, GM set a goal of ending combustion engines by 2035, then scaled back some EV targets in 2025.

• GM patented tetraethyl lead rather than use ethanol, which also stopped engine knock but could not be patented.
• Flint strikers won a 5% raise and the right to talk to each other in the lunchroom.
• After World War II, GM received $32 million in tax write-offs and compensation for Opel plants destroyed by Allied bombing.
• GM built the 1966 Electrovan hydrogen fuel cell vehicle and, with Boeing, the 1971 lunar roving vehicle.
• Post-bankruptcy GM dropped Hummer, Saturn, Saab and Pontiac, signed an $18.6 billion cathode deal with LG Chem and bought the self-driving startup Cruise.