R.I.P., GM

Bill Pugliano / Getty Images As General Motors prepares to file for bankruptcy, Stephen Miller—obituary writer for The Wall Street Journal—on the colorful and tumultuous life of the once-dominant 101-year-old American company.

Like most 101-year-olds, General Motors was beleaguered by health problems for many years—in this case including legacy health-care costs that imposed crippling long-term obligations. But untrue to its legacy, GM failed in recent decades to innovate, whether out of arrogance or ineptitude, ceding to Toyota the title of world’s largest car company. And then came the gas-price spike, the economic crisis, a tumultuous Washington bailout, and now the largest bankruptcy filing ever.

It’s a stunning denouement for what was once an innovative industrial juggernaut, one whose fortunes became so closely identified with the economic health of the nation as a whole that one former GM president could plausibly, if inaccurately, be quoted as saying “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.” (What Charles E. Wilson actually said at his confirmation hearing for secretary of Defense in 1953 was: “For years I thought that what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.”)

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The car company with the no-nonsense name had a tumultuous birth. It was created in 1908 by a former horse-wagon manufacturer, William C. Durant, who had made Buick Motor Co. the most successful brand in the country. Durant’s groundbreaking insight was that a single company could manufacture cars of different brands aimed at different customers. He was a colorful figure, in and out of financial distress, less famous than his friend and rival Henry Ford perhaps because he left no lasting company with his name on it. Durant was a contemporary of Ford¹s and supported Ford¹s successful defense during an important 1909 infringement suit on the internal combustion engine.

GM's founder lost his shirt in the Depression and ended his days managing a bowling alley in Flint, Michigan.

Starting with Buick and a pile of capital from GM’s IPO, Durant acquired Oldsmobile in 1908, and soon rolled out Oakland (later renamed Pontiac) and Cadillac, two truck manufacturers, as well as parts manufacturer AC Delco, more than a dozen in all.

It was a heady time as the car industry strained toward maturity, highlighted by the Great Auto Race of 1908, which covered 22,000 miles from New York to Paris via Asia.

With the hastily assembled GM looking overextended, Durant was forced out of office in 1910 by his bankers. He went on to found Chevrolet, which he brought back into the GM fold in 1917, after having regained the GM presidency in 1916. He was forced out again in 1920, this time for good. (He later founded yet another car company—Durant Motors—then lost his shirt in the Depression, and ended his days managing a bowling alley in Flint, Michigan.)