GM founder William Crapo Durant died broke

One hundred and sixteen years ago this week, William Crapo Durant founded General Motors in the hope of creating a large conglomerate that could pick up all the smaller ones auto companies that flourished at the beginning of the last century Detroit. While GM would eventually become a huge success, indeed one of the biggest companies in the world, its founder died a penniless bowling alley operator who relied on friends to cover his debts.

Banker JP Morgan would call Durant an “unstable visionary”, many referred to him as The Man. Durant dreamed of a world covered in highways when he was still building railroad cars. He dreamed up fast food before anyone else and saw the promise in early technology we now take for granted, like refrigerators. For all that vision, he died penniless in New York, with the Chrysler family and GM CEO Alfred P. Sloan footing his bills.

Around these parts, I focus heavily on the history of the Ford Motor Company, mostly because I grew up in Detroit, where Ford is vilified and maligned in equal measure. We’ve been asleep for too long with the weirdness of the other two Big 3 companies. We start at the top, the man who made Flint, Michigan and had more fingers in more transportation pies than a hundred grandmothers could bake.

Born in Boston, Durant entered the scene in 1861 as the child of wealthy parents with French roots. He dropped out of high school at 17 and ended up in Flint after his father abandoned the family. He became a salesman, selling cigars and lumber before teaming up with a guy named Josiah Dallas Dort to start building carriages in Flint. At 40, he was a millionaire and the owner of the largest carriage manufacturer in the US. He then turned his attention to a new type of carriage – the horseless one.

When Durant took over Buick in 1904, the automaker was ready to close up shop for good. Four years later, the brand outsold Ford and Cadillac, mix. JP Morgan (yes, JP Morgan) was the first to suggest a consolidated automaker. He invited Durant, Henry Ford, Ransom Olds (founder of Oldsmobile) and Ben Briscoe of Maxwell-Briscoe to talk about forming a conglomerate. It didn’t pan out, but Durant was stuck with the idea. He took a train to Lansing, Michigan and roused Ransom from his bed to agree to a merger. And so, on September 16, 1908, General Motors was incorporated with just the two automakers. Just a year later, Durant nearly bought the Ford Motor Company for $8 million. If banking was a game, Ford would be a piece of GM.

A little over a year after founding GM, Durant added 22 more companies to General. Not all of them worked, but the ones that worked are mostly still with us today; Cadillac, AC spark plug, Delco Oakland (Pontiac), Oldsmobile, McLaughlin (GM Canada) and GMC.

Bankers took over GM starting in 1910 when sales tanked due to a cheap car known as the Ford Model T. Out of a job (though still a multimillionaire) Durant founded Chevrolet with Buick race car driver Louis Chevrolet in 1911. It was… By 1916, Durant had regained control of GM. He then brought Chevrolet into the GM family.

Here’s how General Motors itself describes Durant’s ultimate downfall:

In 1920, the post-World War I boom ended, stocks lost 25% of their value, and 100,000 businesses went bankrupt. Durant began secretly buying stocks on margin. He felt personally responsible for the thousands of shareholders who had entrusted the fate of their funds to him. Six months later, his $90 million was gone. He was released again, but with a stipulation that he resign completely from GM. For the second time, he had lost control of the company he had founded. Durant was 59 years old and unemployed.

Durant briefly tried to start another automobile company—Durant Motors—but it was dissolved in 1933. Durant himself filed for bankruptcy in 1937. Not to be deterred, Durant started a bowling alley called the North Flint Recreation Center in 1940 in the shadow of Buick City, a huge GM factory pumping out Buicks on the north side of town. Everyone told him it couldn’t be because the old truck depot he chose for the site was ill-equipped to modernize, not to mention it was across the street from a church (which would make drinking and bowling inappropriate at that times). .) Durant said “This will be bowling without beer and it will be done.” He believes that bowling was a family-friendly activity, not just for men. On this bowling alley, Durant built the Horseshoe Inn, one of the first “fast food” drive-in restaurants in the country.

Although he had a plan to build a nationwide chain, a stroke in 1942 ended those dreams. However, bowling remains a strong tradition in Michigan, which to this day still has more bowling alleys than any state. What Ford did it for the squareDurant did it for bowling.

William Durant died in 1947 at the age of 85 in his New York apartment after winning and losing control of the world’s largest corporation – twice. At the time, other important figures in American business history were paying his bills.

A version of this article originally appeared on Jalopnik.