This material came out voluminous – and for a good reason. To tell about the car in the photos and ignore the figure of its creator would be blasphemy. William Durant was one of those people who not only created the first automobile concern – he was a true visionary from the business world, and some of his ideas still live in different segments of the economy. Today we will have a short excursion into the history of the origin of the US automotive industry.
Who is William Durant
Unlike his more famous contemporary Henry Ford, Durant was never an inventor in the classical sense of the word. He was not an engineer, his advantage was quite different: he was one of the first real businessmen in the automotive industry.
In 1886, William, who had already gained experience in commerce, founded a company that produced wagons. For a decade and a half, the Flint Road Cart Company, according to open sources, has risen in price 1,000 times from $ 2,000 to 2 million and traded all over the world.
At the turn of the century, Luran got acquainted with cars, which at that time had already begun to gradually appear in the United States, but considered them too dangerous, smelly and loud. But promising – he felt that the technology had not yet shown everything it was capable of. In 1904, Will bought Buick – at that time a rather nondescript automaker in terms of finances, but with a good technical base.
Henry Ford said that business should primarily serve people, preached asceticism and devoted his life to creating the first ever people’s car. He considered the main characteristics to be the cost of the car, its reliability and maintainability. William Durant relied on an individual approach to the client, sacrificing productivity in favor of what we used to call options today. His approach made Buick the best-selling cars in the United States in 1908. On September 16, 1908, this led him to create General Motors, which brought together 13 companies, including Buick.
But Durant didn’t stop there: he continued to buy up small companies that produced something useful for him. He even almost bought Ford – the shareholders did not approve the deal, but why Henry was ready to do this is not entirely clear. Against this background, Ford worked on the assembly line, dealer network, after-sales service and building a quality control system in production. It’s pretty obvious which company was making the most money. Shareholders, as you know, do not really like to wait for the promised miracle and really like to receive dividends.
GM suffered losses, chaos reigned inside and Durant’s plan risked bankruptcy. In 1910, he voluntarily and forcibly left the company and the automobile business – perhaps with the prophetic words “I’ll be back”.
In 1911, Will founded Chevrolet together with Louis Chevrolet, thereby plunging into the budget segment of cars. An additional sales incentive was added by the fact that Chevrolet was a racing driver – such guys were highly respected. The business went so well that Durant, deftly juggling stocks, returned to GM in 1915 to the role of managing the corporation. But the exuberant soul of the entrepreneur gave no rest to anyone. If you’re bored with the history lesson, it’s almost over. After returning to General Motors, Durant switched to stock trading, increasing his capital like a real entrepreneur. The company’s business did not go well, which in 1920 led to the repeated expulsion of William Durant from the company – this time for good.
Own a business. Again
Will’s active nature again prevented him from retiring peacefully. He found investors and in 1921 reopened the automobile business – Durant Motors inc. The company is modeled after GM, that is, it includes several sub-brands. In the lower segment, Star had to compete with Chevrolet and Ford, Durant on average with Oldsmobile and others, Flint was used in the fight against Buick. The list of companies included in the concern was expanding – the old habits of buying up everything that seems promising have not gone away. And even the first A-22 machine was demonstrated to the general public just 3 months after the company was founded – this could be considered a success. But by that time, it was not just difficult to compete with established market leaders, but very difficult. And objectively, Durant could not offer customers the already familiar level of prices and service.
The car in the photos is a 1930 Durant Volante. Apparently, this is the 612 convertible model, which was exported to South American countries. The wheelbase is 2.8 meters, which at that time was considered the edge of luxury: nowadays, the Mercedes C-class has more. The abundance of chrome is a tribute to fashion and a status symbol of the car, wheels with spokes are a necessity that looks incredibly elegant today. Under the relatively short hood there is an in-line “six” with a capacity of 58 hp, but it was impossible to do without modern parts – it is almost impossible to find something original for such a “grandfather”.
The beauty of the cars of this era is in the details. Roads outside cities were a real test for tires, so 2 spare wheels were fixed on the sides at once. Leather straps that fix the spare parts are a separate element of gloss. Lighting equipment was used only to illuminate the road to the driver, so there was only room for nominal marker lights in the back.
The interior of the car will seem quite familiar to a modern driver, only the ammeter on the dashboard instead of the voltmeter causes some surprise. The steering wheel had already become the standard in those years, replacing completely illogical levers. The trunk was not just placed in the area of the rear bumper in the form of a separate trunk – in the “Pullman” version, the seats were laid out on a flat floor, which made it possible to sleep on a long road.
We quickly realized that we would not be able to tell something incredible about this car. There is a hell of a lot of information and it contradicts each other. The grains were found on the websites of fans of the brand, but the hundred people in the world who know something about this monster are in no hurry to disclose all the details – and most likely do not know them themselves. However, its history is inseparable from the history of its creator, so we will finish the material with a description of the end of his path.
American fashion drove the company, forced it to release a new model every year. Circulation in the best years was measured in the thousands, but with the advent of the Great Depression, these volumes also disappeared. In 1929, there was a stock market crash, which Durant Motors met with a complete lack of sales. William Durant was one of those who tried to save the stock market on Black Thursday, and bought shares that turned to ashes the very next day. In the early 30s, some cars were able to be realized, but the “roaring twenties” remained in the past, along with prosperity, luxury and chic. The company was heading for extinction.
In 1932, Durant Motors inc. finally went bankrupt. The echoes of the production were sold out and still surfaced in the history of the automotive industry – but Durant was not even there. In 1936, he was declared bankrupt. By that time he was 75 years old.
But old friends at General Motors did not forget Durant’s merits and assigned him a pension of $10,000 – about $ 200,000 now, which at that time allowed him to open a small snack bar with a bowling alley. Even in such conditions, he continued to invent: he predicted in the twentieth century a boom in personal consumption goods after the war and family leisure enterprises. William Durant died in 1947 at the age of 85. His health did not allow him to create a full-fledged memoir, so most of his story was written by journalists. In 1968, he was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame, thus recognizing his achievements in the automotive industry.
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Photographer: mccarthy606
Text: its_sokol
