William C. Durant
Co-founder 1908Background
William Crapo Durant was born in Boston in 1861 and raised in Flint, Michigan, where he became a successful carriage manufacturer before entering the automobile industry. His Durant-Dort Carriage Company was one of the largest carriage manufacturers in the United States by the early 1900s, generating the capital and manufacturing expertise that he would apply to his automotive ambitions. Durant was a relentless salesman and promoter whose capacity for vision and deal-making consistently outpaced his ability to manage the organizations he created. He took operational control of Buick Motor Company in 1904, transformed it into one of America's best-selling cars, and used that success as the foundation for founding General Motors in 1908. He was removed from GM leadership twice — in 1910 and 1920 — due to financial overextension and management challenges.
Role at General Motors Company
William C. Durant is one of the most consequential and tragic figures in American business history. His ability to see the automobile industry's consolidation potential before almost anyone else, and his courage to act on that vision at enormous personal financial risk, created the largest industrial corporation of the 20th century. Yet his management style — intuitive, relationship-driven, deeply suspicious of the bureaucratic controls that modern corporations require — repeatedly led him into financial crises that cost him control of his own creation. After his second and final removal from GM in 1920, Durant formed Durant Motors and attempted to build another automotive empire, but without the assets and market position of GM, the venture struggled through the 1920s and collapsed in the Depression. He spent his final years in Flint, where he had started, operating a bowling alley and remaining remarkably cheerful about his circumstances despite having lost a personal fortune estimated at more than $100 million. He died in 1947, remembered as the man who built General Motors.