The Flint Journal presents:

Durant’s Chevrolet connection cleared way to retake GM

By James M. Miller
Flint Journal Staff Writer

A new player jumped on the industrial stage in Flint in the second decade of the 20th century, and Buick, which had been the leading automaker in Flint, had to share the spotlight with Chevrolet.

Chevrolet played a dramatic role, too. Not only did it bring to Flint another industrial complex, but the company provided the platform for GM founder William C. Durant to take back General Motors after being ousted from control.

“That’s the story that makes Durant different from anybody else,” said Lawrence R. Gustin, author of a Durant biography and co-author of a Buick history. “A lot of people start companies and lose them – but to lose it and then take it back, it’s an amazing story.”

The Chevrolet story in Flint played out in a fast-developing industrial complex along the Flint River on the city’s west side. Among its long-range implications, it helped attract Fisher Body here in the 1920s and led to the construction of the Van Slyke/Bristol Road factories and the Chevrolet parts warehouse (now GM’s Service Parts Operations) in Swartz Creek.

Chevrolet grew so fast it had to erect temporary factories in Flint so production could keep up with demand. In less than a decade, it passed Buick in sales and set its sights on the industry leader, Ford.

Buick continued to grow, too, adding a foundry and other factory buildings at the north-side Hamilton Avenue complex. Flint had a record 15,000 factory workers in 1916. By 1919 the number grew to 29,000.

The Durant drama

The struggle over control of GM began in 1910 when the company got into financial trouble. Durant, a flamboyant, visionary leader, was forced to look for loans. As part of the agreement, he gave up control of the corporation he created, while remaining a vice president.

But Durant wasn’t satisfied with that role and began working on a dream for another automobile venture.

He went to a Buick race driver named Louis Chevrolet, who

Journal File Photo
1911 Whiting

had expressed an interest in building his own car, and the two created the Chevrolet Motor Co.

“If you look at what he did, he took the Buick thing and did it again,” said Gustin, assistant director of public relations at Buick.

Like Buick, Chevrolet started in Detroit then moved to Flint. And Durant went to old friends like William S. Ballenger and Charles M. Begole, who agreed to help him once again. The Durant-Dort Carriage Co., which had earlier bankrolled Buick, signed up for half of Chevrolet’s $2.5-million stock issue in 1912.

“I think that says a lot about the charismatic nature of Durant, and his ability to convince people,” Gustin said.

The community had great confidence in Durant despite his troubles with GM.

On Nov. 28, 1911, not long after he formed Chevrolet, Durant was the guest of honor at a “Wizard’s Banquet” held at the then-new Masonic Temple in Flint, where he was lauded as “El Capitan de Industria.”

There was plenty of reason to be optimistic about Chevrolet’s future – and Flint’s expected role in it. In the first decade of the century, Durant stepped in to take control of the struggling Buick Motor Co. and within a few years had built it into the top-selling brand, then used it as the foundation for General Motors.

And the way he used the new Chevrolet company to retake control of GM proved that he really was the captain of the industry.

The first model Chevrolet – built in Detroit – was a large and expensive six-cylinder car called the Classic Six. Meanwhile, Durant was building a small car in Flint, called the Little.

Chevrolet moved to Flint in 1913 and built its first small cars – the Baby Grand and Royal Mail models – replacing the Little production at the Flint Wagon Works complex along W. Kearsley Street.

The early Chevrolets sold well in the low-price segment, and were joined by the Model 490 in 1915. Chevrolet built a big new assembly plant on Chevrolet Avenue to build the 490. (The factory is now being razed.)

Sales went from 13,292 in 1915 to 70,701 the next year.

Meanwhile, in Durant’s absence at GM, Charles Nash was named president, and Walter P. Chrysler became head of Buick in 1912.

Nash and the other GM executives tried to bring some organization to the chaos that was GM in its early days. They trimmed the car divisions down to four: Buick, Cadillac, Oldsmobile and Oakland (later renamed Pontiac), and sold or closed some of the unprofitable operations.

But while the bankers running things at GM were conservative and cautious, Durant was expansive and enthusiastic about his new company.

“Buick grew from 1910 to 1915, but didn’t grow anywhere near what it could have,” Gustin said.

Durant had vowed to take GM back, and began buying GM stock.

In 1915, he re-incorporated Chevrolet with capitalization of $20 million, and offered GM shareholders five shares of Chevrolet stock for one share of GM stock. Chevrolet stockholders voted to increase the company’s capital stock from $20 million to $80 million, to enable the company to buy a controlling interest in GM.

That put Durant back in the driver’s seat.

Financial writers of the time said the takeover was “like Jonah swallowing the whale.”

After Durant returned, Nash left GM and took over the Jeffreys Co. in Kenosha, Wis., in 1916, and renamed it Nash Motors. Chrysler stayed awhile as head of Buick, and was named vice-president of GM operations. But in 1919 he left GM to take a job with Willys, and would later start Chrysler.

More losers than winners

Durant’s strength was in organizing and buying companies; he had trouble running them. And not all of his ideas were winners.

Dallas Dort, grandson of Durant’s partner J. Dallas Dort, said it is as important to remember the failures and successes.

Dort, president of EKG Research in Flint, said when building GM, Durant invested in some technologies that didn’t work – but it was important to try them because without daring to risk failure, you can’t have dramatic success.

“To me, there’s a lesson in this,” Dort said. “We can’t be always looking for handouts and deals. ... We’ve got to have ideas, and work on them.”

Durant certainly was not afraid. Gustin’s Durant biography quotes him talking to A.B.C. Hardy, Flint’s first auto manufacturer, who worked with Durant at Buick and at Chevrolet: “They say I shouldn’t have bought the Carter-car. Well, how was I supposed to know the Carter-car wasn’t the thing? It had friction drive and no other car had it. How could I tell what these engineers would say next?”

Durant’s success at creating Chevrolet was unusual, even for

Journal File Photo
1918 Chevrolet

the time, because failure was the norm in the auto industry. The carriage-makers are all gone today, but the survival rate for auto manufacturers is only slightly better – fewer than one in 100 auto-making companies formed this century survives.

Some of the short-lived auto ventures in Flint included the Monroe Motor Co., organized when Durant was building Chevrolet. The Flint Wagon Works built the Whiting automobile from 1910 to 1912, before Durant took over the factories for the Little and his other new ventures.

The Durant-Dort Carriage Co. built the Best and Flint trucks from 1912 to 1915, and the Dort Motor Car Co. was formed in 1915, using the former carriage factories near downtown. The Paterson company, one of Flint’s “big three” carriage makers, continued to build automobiles at its downtown factories throughout the decade.

The Randolph Truck Co., brought to Flint when Durant was building General Motors in 1908, was moved to Chicago in 1912 and died there.

Labor lost out, too

The labor movement attempted to gain a foothold in the new factories, but unions saw little success. Employees at some of the fledgling auto companies tried to join the Carriage Workers Union, which took responsibility for the auto factories.

The union was not successful – due in part to strong anti-union efforts by factory owners.

In his book “The Labor Wars,” author Sidney Lens wrote that the American Federation of Labor has to share the blame for the union’s lack of success in organizing the carriage industry and early auto industry.

Lens wrote that the AFL resisted the attempts of the Carriage Workers Union to organize factories across craft lines.

When it became obvious that the carriage workers could not organize the factories that way and the union refused the AFL’s demand in 1917, the union was kicked out.

Wide-scale organization in the auto factories would not occur for two more decades.

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