flâneur

Founders: #120 Billy Durant (Creator of General Motors)

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What I learned from reading Billy Durant Creator of General Motors: The Story of the Flamboyant Genius Who Helped Lead America into the Automobile Age by Lawrence Gustin. ---- [0:32] DURANT MAY BE THE MOST IMPORTANT AUTOMOBILE PIONEER: Of all the colorful men who propelled the United States into the automobile age, Billy Durant was perhaps the most unusual, and from an organizational standpoint in the pioneering era, the most important. Durant had a hand in shaping the beginnings of three of the four major American automobile manufacturing corporations that exist today. [4:16] HIS LIFE STORY HAS A SURPRISING END: The guy founded General Motors, Chrysler, and Frigidaire. Three gigantic, successful companies. How does he die with no money? [6:04] DURANT TRIED TO PROTECT HIS INVESTORS: He had an attitude, not a common among men of big money. He tried to protect the people who invested with him, even if this protection would break him. Finally, it did. And when he was unable to save the dollars of his supporters he plunged from multimillionaire to bankruptcy. [10:29] DURANT WAS SKEPTICAL OF AUTOMOBILES: Durant starts out as an automobile skeptic. He builds the General Motors of horse-d

[00:00:00] It's fitting that Durant's name as GM's founder is cast in bronze on a historical marker in front of the corporation's headquarters, because neither GM nor its most famous American brands would likely exist today had he not either created or saved them. That marker is about the only public reminder at General Motors of the man who created GM, the largest industrial corporation in the history of the world. William Durant is no longer exactly a household name. He's seldom mentioned in the same breath with Henry Ford, Walter Chrysler, or Alfred P. Sloan. Yet of all the colorful men…

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