William C. (Billy) Durant

William C. (Billy) Durant

By David Glenn Cox

It seems some of us live our lives kissed by angels and granted with the Midas touch; Billy Durant would seem to be one such individual. The problem we face in accessing the life of Billy Durant is in the myth and legend connected with him. After being removed as the Chairman of General Motors by a consortium of bankers, Billy Durant really did march into the annual GM stockholders meeting followed by a line of assistants, each carrying a bushel basket of stock certificates. Durant announced to the board and to the room, "Gentleman, I now control this company."

He was born in Boston in December of 1861, but spent his early years with his maternal grandfather in Flint, Michigan. His Grandfather Henry Crapo had foreseen the decline of the whaling business in New England and had taken his fortune west to invest in the lumber business. Eventually, Henry Crapo was elected Governor of Michigan. Young William quit school to work in his grandfather's lumber yard. Billy Durant began his professional career as a cigar salesman and eventually moved on to selling carriages.

In 1885, Durant partnered with Josiah (Dallas) Dort to found the Coldwater Road Cart Company. A year later, Durant became acquainted with the wagon designs of a local competitor. Durant with $2,000 in seed money bought the designs and founded the Flint Road Cart Company. In less than four years, the Durant – Dort Carriage Company had become one of the leading providers of horse-drawn vehicles in the world, with over a dozen factories selling 75,000 carriages a year.

At this point in his career, Billy Durant thought the mechanics and tinkerer's toying with automobiles were a nuisance. He considered automobiles smelly, noisy and unsafe, so unsafe; he refused to allow his daughter to ride in one. Durant's success and his can do attitude had made him a man with a reputation in Detroit circles. He was asked by investors to become the general manager of a failing automobile company, founded by an engineer holding 13 patents in plumbing fixtures. David Buick was without a doubt a genius, but he wasn't much of a car salesman.

Automobiles of this era were primarily hand-built, many of the components were rough and hand finished. Perhaps, like his grandfather before him, Durant saw the end of the wagon business over the horizon. On Durant’s name alone, Buick was able to raise $1.5 million in capital, for a car company that had sold less than a 100 cars. With Durant's genius for organization, in less than two years, Buick was selling 250 cars a week.

Let's stop for a moment, Billy Durant had no automotive experience. Building an automobile was very different from building a wagon, so how did he do it? Durant had an eye for talent, and being a self-made man himself, he wasn't afraid to listen to people with big ideas.

General Motors was born September 1, 1908; Durant incorporated, sold stock and used the proceeds to buy Oldsmobile. Ransom Olds had been the most successful of the early car builders. His curved dash Oldsmobile had sold 19,000 units between the years of 1901 to 1907 making it the most popular car in America, but the company had fallen on hard times. Durant used the proceeds from his GM stock sales to purchase what was at the time, a premiere marquee automotive brand name. Elation soon turned to shock, as Durant visited the Olds factory, only to discover the company had no new models planned.

Durant remarked, "We just spent a million dollars for road signs!" He returned to the Olds factory driving a new Buick. Durant instructed the workers to cut the Buick into four quarters. He then moved the sides six inches further apart and lengthened the car by a foot. He then told them to use an Oldsmobile radiator and hood as he explained, "There, that is your new car."

The new Oldsmobile was priced $250 higher than the Buick, and sold so well, the company turned a profit before the end of the year. Then Durant bought the Oakland car company. The Oakland car company only had one popular model and Durant ordered all the other models discontinued. He would focus the company's energies on that one model and renamed the company Pontiac, after that popular model.

In telling a story about Detroit and the auto industry, the name of Henry Ford is bound to come up sooner or later. When Billy Durant bought the Cadillac name, it was long after Henry Ford had left the company. The original name for Cadillac was the Detroit Automobile Company and the original owner had been Henry Ford, and of course, the banks. Ford was a tinkerer, not an engineer. The company foundered and the bankers had hired Henry J. Leyland to be Ford's assistant and to be the banker eyes and ears, trying to keep a handle on the young and irascible Mr. Ford.

Henry Leyland had been apprenticed during the civil war as a gunsmith. He'd worked in Union arsenals and watched arms being mass-produced with identical parts. Leyland had gone on to build locomotives; Leyland and Ford were oil and water. Ford was a tinkerer and Leyland was a master precision builder. The tolerances of Ford's factory floor were 1/8 of an inch, Leyland's tolerances were 0.10. Leyland replaced the hammer on the factory floor with the micrometer. In less than two years Ford quit, fed up with bankers and most of all fed up with Henry Leyland.

Since Henry Ford was now gone, the company was renamed in honor of the founder of Detroit, Antoine Laumet de La Mothe Cadillac. Using Leyland's production methods, the Cadillac models ran smoother. Originally mid-priced, Leyland's Cadillac's were priced up, because of a new word creeping into the automotive industry, quality. Cadillac under Leyland was building more than transportation; they were building, quality transportation. After GM purchased Cadillac, Leyland's standards and methods became the GM standard.

Leyland left Cadillac, eventually, founding another car company which he named in honor of his favorite President, Abraham Lincoln. In 1907, a financial panic sent the fledgling auto industry into tail spin. Durant proposed a scheme where the automakers would all invest equally in each others companies. Henry Ford and the bankers squashed the plan.

By 1910, General Motors owned thirteen car companies along with ten parts companies and most, were hemorrhaging cash. GM needed $12 million dollars or the company would fail, the bankers agreed to refinance GM on one condition, the removal of William C. Durant as chairman. Durant had bought so many companies all making the same or similar products, the company was a mess. No one could organize so many similar companies, all with similar product lines into a single streamlined company.

The bankers tried to untangle the mess, by cutting small car production and focusing on the more profitable big cars, sound familiar? A year later, Buick sales were off by 50% and factories were shutting down and laying off workers. One of the projects cancelled by the bankers had been a low-cost Buick model to compete with Ford's Model T. Along comes Billy Durant and he's paired himself with one of the world's foremost auto racers. Durant announces he is forming a new car company with Louis Chevrolet. Chevrolet is to design the cars, but really it's all Durant. He resurrects the canceled Buick 10 and renames it the Chevrolet 490.

The 490 referred to the price of the car, it was only $50.00 more than a Ford Model T and offered an electric starter, electric running lights and a spare tire. In a scant four years, Billy Durant was selling 13,000 Chevrolet's a year and begins buying up large blocks of GM stock with his profits. Durant also encourages his wealthy friends to buy GM stock giving him their proxies.

So in September of 1915, Billy Durant shows up the GM stockholders meeting unannounced; as the doors open Durant marches into the room and tells the unsuspecting board of directors, "Gentleman, I now control this company."

Vindicated, Durant took control over GM once more. During his absence the bankers had hired Walter Chrysler to be the production chief at Buick. Chrysler had changed the way automobiles were built. He streamlined the production line making it faster, cleaner and cheaper.

Chrysler was no fool, the bankers had put him in charge and when Durant took back control, Walter Chrysler submitted his resignation. Durant understood what Chrysler's innovation meant to the company and rather than accepting his resignation, Billy Durant put him in full control of Buick. He offered Chrysler an unheard of three-year contract at $10,000 per month with an annual bonus of $500,000 in GM stock.

Just as he had before, Durant eventually lost control of GM in 1920 after another wave of spending. He was back in the car business again by 1921, with Durant Motor Company, building the Durant Star, a low-cost equivalent to the Model T. By now William C. Durant was a mogul and household name; he rubbed shoulders with America's wealthy elite, as one of the boys.

When the stock market crashed in 1929 Billy Durant went broke. But it is important to remember, because it speaks to the character of the man. Billy Durant did not go broke in the stock market crash, he went broke trying to stop the stock market crash of 1929. Durant along with the Rockefeller's and other industrialists believed that if enough buy orders were placed, it would offset the sell orders and stop the slide. The plan failed and Billy Durant was left with $250 in assets and his personal clothes. The Durant Auto Company folded in 1933 and Durant was left operating a bowling alley in a former Oldsmobile showroom.

Durant being Durant, he soon added a grocery store, a restaurant, along with several more bowling alleys. A stroke in 1942 left him a semi-invalid until his death in 1947. Billy Durant is a towering figure in American automotive lore, a giant of manufacturing and production.