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The Fabulous Billy Durant*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

John B. Rae
John B. Rae
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of History at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Abstract

Durant has been described as “the most picturesque, spectacular, and aggressive figure in the chronicles of American automobiledom” but he was much more than this. His career is a chssic study in the dual abilities, promotional and administrative, that created and nourished big business in America. Ultimate personal disaster grew out of Durant's failure to strike a balance between the two, yet his genius left imperishable marks, and his luster as the symbol of an era is untarnished.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1958 , pp. 255 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1958

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References

1 The fullest accounts of Durant's early life are in Durant, Margery, My Father (New York, 1929), pp. 10 ff.Google Scholar, and Crow, Carl, The City of Flint Grows Up (New York, 1945), pp. 29, 31–32.Google Scholar

2 This estimate of the senior Durant is based on letters in the Crapo Manuscripts in the Michigan Historical Collections. I am indebted for the information to Professor Martin D. Lewis of Baldwin-Wallace College, who is writing a life of Henry Crapo.

3 Pound, Arthur, The Turning Wheel (New York, 1934), pp. 78–79.Google Scholar

4 Durant, My Father, p. 9.

5 There is a sketch of Buick's, career in the National Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York, 1948), Vol. 34, pp. 368–369.Google Scholar

6 Crow, op. cit., p. 46.

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8 Federal Trade Commission, Report on the Motor Vehicle Industry (Washington, 1939), pp. 421–422.Google Scholar

9 He organized the United States Motors Corporation in 1910. It collapsed two years later and was reorganized as the Maxwell Motor Car Company, later to be the nucleus of the Chrysler Corporation.

10 Sloan, Alfred P. Jr., in collaboration with Boyden Sparks, Adventures of a White Collar Man (New York, 1941), p. 108.Google Scholar

11 Durant, My Father, p. 119.

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14 F. T. C., Report, pp. 450–451.

15 The story of the refinancing of General Motors in 1910 is told in Seltzer, op. cit., pp. 163–165. The information on Nash was given to me by Mr. David F. Edwards, Chairman of the Board of Saco-Lowell Shops, who was one of Storrow's aides at this time.

16 The intervention of the Lelands is mentioned by Seltzer. I am indebted to Mrs. Wilfred C. Leland for a detailed account of the contribution of her husband and her father-in-law to the saving of General Motors.

17 This information was given to me by Mr. David H. Howie, now of the Fiduciary Trust Company of Boston, who became Storrow's secretary in 1911.

18 Durant, My Father, p. 145; The Automobile, Vol. 34, No. 8 (Feb. 26, 1916), p. 386.

19 Seltzer, p. 173; Horseless Age, Vol. 31, No. 25 (June 18, 1913), p. 1,094.

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21 The Automobile, Vol. 33, No. 15 (Oct. 7, 1915), p. 674.

22 F. T. C., Report on the Motor Vehicle Industry, p. 693; Walter Chrysler (in collaboration with Boyden Sparks), Life of an American Workman (New York, 1937), pp. 123–124.

23 Sloan, Adventures of a White Collar Man, pp. 99–100.

24 Ibid., pp. 106–110.

25 Chrysler, op. cit., p. 160.

26 Ibid., pp. 157–158.

27 Ibid., p. 161.

28 Sloan, op. cit., p. 106.

29 Ibid., p. 119.

30 Durant, My Father, p. 271; Automotive Industries, Vol. 43, No. 22 (Nov. 25, 1920), p. 1,097.

31 Durant, op. cit., p. 253.

32 Sloan, op. cit., p. 139.

33 Automotive Industries, Vol. 44, No. 13 (March 31, 1921), p. 726.

34 Automotive Industries, Vol. 44, No. 19 (May 26, 1921), p. 1,136; Vol. 45, No. 6 (Aug. 11, 1921), p. 266; Vol. 47, No. 4 (July 27, 1922), p. 186.

35 Automotive Industries, Vol. 46, No. 15 (April 13, 1922), p. 833.

36 Automotive Industries, Vol. 46, No. 23 (June 8, 1922), p. 1,344; Chrysler, American Workman, p. 180.

37 Automotive Industries, Vol. 48, No. 11 (March 15, 1923), p. 645; Vol. 49, No. 14 (Oct. 4, 1923), p. 709.

38 Automotive Industries, Vol. 55, No. 3 (July 15, 1926), p. 111; Vol. 56, No. 13 (April 2, 1927), p. 524.

39 Motor Age, Vol. 51, No. 15 (April 14, 1927), p. 28; Vol. 52, No. 22 (Dec. 1, 1927), p. 10.

40 Automotive Industries, Vol. 60, No. 2 (Jan. 12, 1929), p. 62; Vol. 60, No. 3, p. 102.

41 Automotive Industries, Vol. 63, No. 8 (Aug. 23, 1930), p. 271.

42 Cleveland, R. M. and Williamson, S. T., The Road Is Yours (New York, 1951).Google Scholar

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44 Smith, Motoring Down a Quarter of a Century, p. 38.