In this milestone Year of the Car, it's time to dust off memories of Flint's automotive heritage.
This year marks the 100th birthday of General Motors. It's appropriate that Flint has reclaimed the proud old slogan "Vehicle City" on one of those new downtown arches.
When that phrase originated in the 19th century, it referred to Flint's carriage industry. But it certainly was reinforced through most of the 20th century when Flint was renowned as a world leader in the auto industry. Flint was the birthplace of GM, which became the world's largest producer of motor vehicles. Indeed, in the late 20th century, GM was recognized as the largest industrial corporation in history, and Flint was alive with huge factory complexes of Buick, Chevrolet, Fisher Body, AC Spark Plug and other parts producers.
Those factories were reminders that Flint was where Buick and then Chevrolet grew into giant enterprises, where AC Spark Plug began and where the UAW won recognition from GM in the Sit-Down Strike of 1936-37.
So, how did it start? How did a city far removed from main transportation routes and without a major river or other significant geographic advantage become, with Detroit, the center of the American auto industry?
A man whose father was close to the auto pioneers answered all that succinctly in the late 1960s.
"In the early days of this century, Flint had a group of men of unusual ability," said George H. Maines, then a retired public relations man for politicians and entertainment stars. "There was probably not a more lively bunch anywhere else in the country.
"And the spark plug of them all was Billy Durant."
The fabulous Billy Durant
As a young man, William C. "Billy" Durant was slim and energetic, about 5 feet 8 inches tall with darting brown eyes, a dazzling smile, a Boston accent (he was born there) and a soft-spoken nature.
He had a quick mind, dressed well, carried himself with an air of supreme confidence and had a well-deserved reputation as an excellent promoter and salesman extraordinaire.
He was the grandson of a Michigan governor, lumber baron Henry Howland Crapo, who came to Flint in January 1856.
Before he founded General Motors, Durant was hailed as king of Flint's carriage industries; savior of Buick -- who also salvaged Oldsmobile, Oakland (later renamed Pontiac) and maybe Cadillac as well; collector of truck companies that eventually became GMC Truck; and the financial angel for the creation of AC Spark Plug.
After founding, and losing, GM, Durant created Chevrolet Motor Co. -- which he regarded as his one of his greatest achievements -- and regained control of GM with the help of new friends Pierre DuPont and John J. Raskob of the DuPont Co.
On the side, Durant financed, organized and promoted a small refrigerator company he named Frigidaire. Since everyone wanted a better way to cool food than with a block of ice in an insulated box, the company was a big success.
He backed it with his own money, then turned it over to GM.
In his second time around at GM, Durant made the company eight times larger than the one he took back from the bankers. Later he acquired the engineering operations of Charles F. Kettering, creator of the automotive self-starter that replaced the hand crank and helped popularize automobiles.
As Fred Smith, Oldsmobile's leader at the time Durant created GM, once wrote: "I had at least the intelligence to see in him (Durant) the strongest and most courageous individual then in the business and the master salesman of all time. ... It would be a poorly posted analyst who failed to list W.C. Durant as the most picturesque, spectacular and aggressive figure in the chronicles of American automobiledom."
The road cart: Durant's first 'self-seller'
In 1886, Durant hitched a ride in a friend's horse-drawn road cart and was so impressed with its patented spring suspension -- which cushioned the bumps of Flint's rough roads -- that he hopped a train to Coldwater, where the cart was built.
Within a few days, he had bought all rights to the cart, including the patented suspension and one finished cart, for $1,500 (borrowed from a local bank). A friend, Dallas Dort, became his partner, getting much of his share from his mother.
Durant immediately shipped his only cart to a big fair in Wisconsin, talked the judges into awarding it a blue ribbon, then took orders for 600 carts.
He had no ability to build the carts, but he did have a plan.
He went to Flint's finest carriage builder, William A. Paterson, and contracted with him for 1,200 carts exactly like the sample.
He figured he could sell the "Blue Ribbon" carriages for twice what he paid Paterson.
Later, Durant would label that road cart as "a self-seller."
Durant and Dort's Flint Road Cart Co. soon evolved into the Durant-Dort Carriage Co. It became a huge enterprise with assembly factories and supplier companies mostly grouped in Flint. Durant-Dort later would be described as the GM of the carriage business.
By 1900, with Durant's salesmanship and Dort's management, Durant-Dort became the largest-volume carriage company in the country, and Durant, growing bored, went off to New York to play the stock market.
Wouldn't you really rather have a Buick?
A former Durant-Dort president, A.B.C. Hardy, became Flint's first automobile manufacturer, turning out 52 Hardy Flint Roadsters in 1902-03 (the Sloan Museum has one).
Meanwhile, in 1903, James H. Whiting, a Civil War veteran and head of Flint Wagon Works, invested in Buick Motor Co., a tiny engine company that recently had incorporated in Detroit.
Whiting and the other Flint Wagon Works directors borrowed $10,000 from a local bank (it took the signatures of those prominent Flint businessmen to secure the loan) and moved the engine company and its president, David Dunbar Buick, from Detroit to Flint.
On Sept. 12, 1903, the day after the move was announced, The Flint Journal reported: "Flint is the most natural center for the manufacture of autos in the whole country. It is the vehicle city of the United States."
The original Flint Buick factory, on West Kearsley Street near the Wagon Works, was completed in December 1903.
But even though the Buick got a great review, Whiting was running out of money. Auto manufacturing was a lot more expensive than carriage building, and Buick Motor Co. was nearly bankrupt.
Whiting confided his concerns to his friend Fred A. Aldrich, an executive of the rival Durant-Dort Carriage Co., who advised him that the man who could put Buick on its feet was Durant.
Durant to the rescue
It wasn't easy to persuade Durant, who considered automobiles smelly and noisy, to take control of Buick.
But eventually, after returning to Flint, listening to his friends and riding in and driving the machine, Durant came to realize the Buick, with its powerful engine that could climb hills and plow through the local mud roads, was another self-seller.
Once Buick's investors said they would put up more money, Durant agreed to take control of the company and make sure it was properly organized, funded and promoted.
Durant's agreement to take control of Buick on Nov. 1, 1904, was the spark that would ignite General Motors. The little company with the great engine and the super salesman who painted big pictures came together, and things began to happen.
Durant took a Buick car to the New York Auto Show in January 1905 and corralled orders for 1,100 cars before the company had built 40.
Then he moved Buick's assembly operations to a big vacant plant owned by Durant-Dort in Jackson while he raised $500,000 to build a huge industrial complex on Flint's north side.
Much of the money came from his Flint friends and relatives who had sat on fortunes from the lumber days and who now feared he would move the whole business to Bay City, because of its port on Lake Huron.
Buick, which had built 37 cars in Flint in 1904, managed to produce about 750 in Jackson in 1905.
The arrival of C.S. Mott
Durant's ability to think and act big brought Charles Stewart Mott to Flint. Mott was in charge of the Weston-Mott axle works in Utica, N.Y. Durant told Mott he'd provide him money, a factory and an exclusive contract with Buick if Mott would set up operations next to the Buick plant in Flint.
Mott visited Flint at Durant's invitation during Labor Day weekend of 1905, looked around and agreed. Less than two years later, Weston-Mott had moved to Flint, and operations were under way.
When Mott sold his company to General Motors a few years later, he became a member of GM's board of directors -- a post he would hold for 60 years. Mott eventually made hundreds of millions of dollars in his investments, much of it in GM stock, and created the Mott Foundation.
"I wouldn't be here talking to you, and you wouldn't be here listening to me, if it hadn't been for Durant and all the good, bad and indifferent things Durant ever did," Mott said decades later.
By 1908, Durant had guided Buick from the brink of bankruptcy to No. 1 in production.
He always was interested in new business opportunities, so when Detroit businessman Benjamin Briscoe Jr. came to him with a proposal to consolidate several auto companies in the low-price field, Durant was all ears.
The founding of General Motors
According to Durant, the first in a sequence of meetings that led to the creation of GM occurred in May 1908, when Briscoe joined Durant for breakfast at the Dresden Hotel in Flint and then for a talk in his office at Buick. The topic was a proposal by a partner of J.P. Morgan and Co. who was exploring a merger of auto companies.
There are disputes about the timing, but Durant said that led to another meeting at the old Pontchartrain Hotel in Detroit, where Durant hosted lunch for Henry Ford, Ransom Olds (founder of Oldsmobile who then headed REO), Briscoe and their advisers.
There were other meetings in New York, but the talks collapsed when Ford and Olds told the Morgan partner they would sell their companies for cash but not for stock in any combined company.
Durant, who had pulled all the outstanding Buick stock together, decided he needed an immediate consolidation.
It was now or never. He would go it alone.
He quickly found the ailing Olds Motor Works in Lansing agreeable to a merger with Buick, and on Sept. 16, 1908, Durant created General Motors as a holding company.
This year's anniversary of that date, Sept. 16, 2008, is GM's official 100th birthday.
Placing Buick and Olds under the umbrella of GM as a holding company was only the beginning.
Durant gathered about 30 companies in 1908 and 1909 -- including Cadillac, Oakland and truck companies that together became GMC Truck. He also picked up AC Spark Plug, originally called Champion Ignition, with the AC standing for its colorful founder, French-born Albert Champion.
Goodbye GM, hello Chevrolet
In 1910, Durant lost control of GM. His bankers, concerned that he was expanding too fast and leery about the auto industry in general, cut off his credit and created their own board of directors in a reorganization.
Durant, still a GM vice president though no longer in control, decided to build a new GM-like organization. In 1911, he hired Louis Chevrolet, a former Buick race driver who lived for a while in Flint, as engineer in his newly formed Chevrolet Motor Co.
Like Buick, the Chevrolet company started in Detroit but became significant only after it was moved to Flint. Durant took over the old Flint Wagon Works factories for Chevrolet.
In 1915-16, Durant made his big comeback in GM, trading Chevrolet stock for GM stock. He not only regained control of GM, replacing the bankers' board in a stunning maneuver, he also took over as the company's president.
He succeeded another former Flint man, Charles W. Nash, who had started as a worker at Durant-Dort and later rose to become its leader.
Always dreaming big
By late 1920, Durant had become overextended in the stock market and was ousted from the GM presidency.
But he was not through building factories in Flint.
In the early 1920s, he built a large factory on South Saginaw Street to produce vehicles for his final automotive endeavor, Durant Motors.
But by the late '20s, the company was fading. The plant was sold to GM and became Fisher Body Plant 1.
As for Durant, after a spectacular run as the "bull of bulls" in the stock market of the Roaring '20s, he lost another fortune and was left destitute by the Great Depression.
He declared bankruptcy in 1936 and by 1940 was running a bowling alley, North Flint Recreation, on North Saginaw Street near Hamilton Avenue, not far from the Buick complex he had created decades earlier.
He even added Flint's first drive-in restaurant, the Horseshoe Bar, to the facility.
While obviously heartsick over his financial reversals, he seemed enthusiastic about his new business and planned a nationwide string of bowling alleys.
Ill health ended that idea. Durant had a stroke in Flint in 1942, recuperated in Hurley Hospital and died March 18, 1947, in his New York apartment. He was 85.
General Motors 100th Anniversary
William C. "Billy" Durant was a leader among auto pioneers
Flint's General Motors eggs not all in one basket
General Motors parade to feature 100 years of history
General Motors 100th Anniversary calendar of events
General Motors celebration 'salutes the working people'
UAW sit-down striker Arthur Lowell: 'I'm proud of what we did'
Strikers forged union history: 44-day standoff changed working conditions forever
In 1954, The Flint Journal publishes 204-page special section for General Motors' 50th anniversary
High-tech skills now key for auto workers
General Motors' concept cars can be electrifying
Automotive consultant: Future cars will be smaller, self-directed
Photos of GM cars, truck exhibited at Flint Institute of Arts
Heller: Accuracy not the forte of auto seers
Community supporters made Flint Cultural Center a reality
Celebrating favorites: A sampling of readers' car photos