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But
the attempt stimulated Billy Durant's imagination and pushed him to
found General Motors, using Buick as a cornerstone and adding in a
short time, Oldsmobile, for which he paid in stock and Cadillac,
which involved the largest cash transaction in the automotive
industry to that date. Together with Cadillac, Durant also acquired
the services of Henry Martyn Leland, dean of Michigan machinists and
his equally able son Wilfred. The Lelands remained in charge of
Cadillac until 1917, when they left and formed the Lincoln Motor
Company to manufacture aircraft engines. After the war they started
to produce a fine luxury car, but failed in the post-war depression
of the early 1920s. Lincoln was taken over by Henry Ford, who may
have enjoyed the hour of revenge towards the man [Henry Martyn
Leland] whom he held at least partially responsible for an early
personal failure.
Besides
automobile factories, William C. Durant also assembled a large
number of auto parts manufacturers under the umbrella of his General
Motors Corporation, most of whose founders became
multi-millionaires. The most famous were Albert Champion, Charles
Stewart Mott, Alfred Pritchard Sloan, Charles Franklin Kettering and
the Fisher Brothers. Ford in turn purchased bodies from Walter O.
Briggs and Edward G. Budd and wheels from John Kelsey and Clarence
B. Hayes. Other parts suppliers blossomed with the steady expansion
of the American automotive industry.
Finally,
as a result of the huge demand generated by the automobile industry,
three families of rubber manufacturers, who henceforth specialized
on automobile tires, each built a fortune of some $20 million (as
measured in 1919). These were the Seiberlings (Goodyear), the
Goodriches and Harvey Samuel Firestone, who was also a personal
friend and fellow wanderer of Henry Ford. One of Ford's grandsons
actually married a granddaughter of Harvey Firestone.
Almost
from its earliest days, the automobile industry was a fertile
playground for engineers and managers, many of whom founded
companies of their own or acquired established companies and lead
them to new heights. Prominent examples of such
manager-turned-entrepreneurs are Durant's disciples at General
Motors, Charles W. Nash and Walter P. Chrysler. Nash, after leaving
General Motors, purchased the Thomas B. Jeffery Company, renamed it
and grew it into a profitable corporation. Walter P. Chrysler saved
Maxwell, used it as a corner stone for his own Chrysler Corporation
and with the latter took over the Dodge Brothers Company in 1928 to
become the number two car producer in the USA during the 1930s and
1940s.
Other
examples include a group of Olds managers and engineers who founded
Hudson in 1909 (Roy D. Chapin, Howard E. Coffin, Frederick O. Bezner
and Roscoe B. Jackson) and Errett Lobbean Cord. A former Moon
retailer, Cord joined the Auburn Automobile Company in 1924 as
vice-president and general manager, turned it around and built it
into a remarkable group of automotive and aviation companies.
Although his automobile brands (Auburn, Cord and Duesenberg)
disappeared as many others in the 1930s, his Aviation Corporation of
Delaware (AVCO) survived and expanded, although it had to divest its
air transportation business, including American Airlines.
Go on reading at the members pages of "A Classification of
American Wealth" :
The Ford Story - Part I : the rise of
Henry Ford
William Crapo Durant - founder of
General Motors
Automobile & Aviation
> Index
and Introduction
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