Billy Durant
When Billy Durant took a call from Ben Briscoe, President of the Maxwell-Briscoe Company, a chain reaction started that has yet to end. That simple conversation and the in-person meeting that followed at Buick planted the seed of consolidation in Durant’s mind that would lead to the formation of General Motors and the triumph of Flint.
Briscoe, backed by George Perkins of J. P. Morgan and Company, suggested a merger of over 20 automobile companies including Packard, Stoddard-Dayton, Thomas, Peerless and more. Durant, already a success in business with the Flint Road Cart Company and then Buick, didn’t believe the plan was workable. With a small dab of future irony, Durant claimed that the proposition was too big – it had too many working parts. Instead, he proposed a smaller consolidation; one that included Maxwell-Briscoe, Ford Motor Company and Ransom Olds (previously of Olds Motor Works). Right away, complications existed, including the design of the consolidation itself. Durant favored creating a holding company in which each individual business could continue to operate independently. Briscoe and others desired one large company.
Talks continued in the months ahead with promise, but everything nearly fell apart in June of 1908, when Ransom Olds and Henry Ford pulled out of negotiations. Ford refused to sell for anything but cash. (Durant was offering future stock at the time.) Still, Perkins, Briscoe and Durant hoped to combine Buick and Maxwell-Briscoe to be called the United Motors Company. In July, at the request of Perkins, the name was changed to the International Motor Car Company. Later that month, J. P. Morgan pulled out of the collaboration, leaving Durant the only one with the will to move forward. Perkins held the rights to the proposed name of the business, leaving Durant to choose a new title for the future holding company. He chose “General Motors.”
Durant was sure that the new owners of Olds Motor Works would sign on to the venture and instructed his attorneys to file the incorporation papers. Articles of Incorporation were filed for the General Motors Company of New Jersey by Curtis R. Hathaway on September 16, 1908. The initial capital stock was only $2,000 and the names of the initial incorporators were George E. Daniels, Benjamin Marcuse and Arthur W. Britton. By September 28, Durant had increased the capital stock to $12.5 million. He then sold Buick to General Motors, purchased Olds Motor Works, and the W. F. Stewart Body Plant in Flint.
The rest, as they say, is Flint history.
