Buick is the car company that gave birth to General Motors
David Dunbar Buick would rather have kept building stationary and boat engines than cars. His chief engineer quit in frustration, and Buick himself sold out in 1906, later dying in modest circumstances. Yet the company bearing his name became America's best-selling car brand and, in 1908, the foundation of General Motors.
The first two Buick cars, built in 1899 and 1900, were the work of engineer Walter Marr. With his boss unenthusiastic, Marr left in 1901 to start his own firm. His successor, Eugene Richard, patented Marr's valve-in-head engine design in Buick's name, an overhead-valve layout that became a signature. Buick incorporated the Buick Motor Company in Detroit on 19 May 1903, financed by his friend Benjamin Briscoe, who that September sold control to James Whiting of the Flint Wagon Works.
Whiting moved the operation to Flint, across the road from his wagon factory, and rehired Marr. Their first production car used a two-cylinder engine with horizontally opposed cylinders. Whiting ran out of money after a handful of Model Bs, so in 1904 he brought in William C. Durant, who had made a fortune with Josiah Dort building carriages; their company was then the largest carriage maker in the country. Durant ramped up output dramatically, as the canvas shows, and by 1908 Buick was claiming to be the largest car manufacturer in the world, ahead of Ford, Maxwell and Olds.
Durant used that success as a springboard. He agreed in 1907 to supply motors to R. S. McLaughlin, a Canadian carmaker, and in 1908 he founded General Motors with Buick at its core.
Buick is among the oldest car brands in the world, and since Oldsmobile was shut down in 2004 it has been the oldest surviving American one. Rivals from the era show how early it was: Studebaker dates to 1852 but built no cars until 1902, and Henry Ford launched Ford Motor Company in 1903. Today GM positions Buick as a premium brand, above Chevrolet and below Cadillac.
Source: Buick
