GENERAL MOTORS was founded on September 27th, 1908, in Flint, Michigan, as a holding company for Buick Motors, at that time controlled by William C Durant.
Later that year GM acquired control of Oldsmobile, and in 1909 Durant bought Cadillac, Elmore and Oakland (later renamed Pontiac). GM also entered truck manufacture that year. Financing such a rapid series of acquisitions resulted in huge debt, and in 1910 Durant lost control of the firm when the market for new cars collapsed.
After a few years Durant started the Chevrolet Motor Company, and through this venture secretly purchased a controlling interest in GM. After a remarkable proxy battle, Durant once again took control of GM. Incredibly, he again lost control soon afterwards when the new vehicle market again collapsed.
Alfred P Sloan was appointed to head the ailing firm in 1918. Between then and 1957 when he retired, Sloan built GM into the largest private industrial enterprise in the world – the producer of over half the passenger cars and trucks in the US and Canada. GM’s growth continued long after Sloan’s departure. By the early 1980s, as the company’s plants became increasingly automated, GM employed 349,000 workers and operated 150 assembly plants worldwide.
The late 1990s were good times for GM with the US economy on the rise and huge profits being made on the sale of light trucks and SUVs in particular.
After 9/11, a stock market decline caused a pension and benefit fund under-funding crisis.
Rapidly rising fuel prices in 2008 brought about a 30 per cent decline in the sale of SUVs. By the end of the first six months of 2008, GM had made a loss of $18.8 billion (€13.2 billion) and by late October its stock dropped 76 per cent in value. On December 12th last GM announced it was almost out of cash. This turned into the crisis which brought GM to seek court protection – the biggest failure of a company in US history.