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General Motors bankruptcy: born 1908, reborn 2009
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Photo of 1953 Buick Skylark Concertible courtesy of General Motors
American icon General Motors has fallen.
June 1, 2009: General Motors, the company that defined American industry and ingenuity for more than 100 years is gone, replaced by a leaner, meaner version of itself that -- hopefully -- will be profitable once again.
General Motors was born in 1908, when William C. Durant organized the small, independent auto-makers Buick, Olds and Cadillac into a new company that would have more marketing clout. A couple of years later, the company headed by Louis Chevrolet was added, then Pontiac.
For much of the 40s and 50s, General Motors dominated Detroit, with powerful, beautiful cars like the 1953 Buikck Skylark Convertible you see here. Then, it all fell apart. The beginning of the end for GM started in the 1960s, with the problem-plagued Chevrolet Corvair, which caught fire so often and had so many other problems that it prompted the birth of the American consumer movement, the passage of so-called 'lemon laws' and the creation of the National Hightway Traffic Safety Adminsitration (NHTSA). The book Ralph Nader wrote about the Corvair and GM and Detroit -- Unsafe at Any Speed -- is still a classic. It took years for GM to get its reputation back for building safe, reliable cars.
The pity is that today GM is producing some of its best designed cars ever, and I'm not just describing the iconic Chevrolet Corvette. So what's the future for GM?
Actually, 1908 was a lot like 2009, with a lot of small car companies around, few of which are still around. Packard, Duesenberg, Hupmobile, American Simplex, the steam-powered Stanley, forever known as the Stanley Steamer. The first 'horseless carriages' built by the Studebaker brothers used an electric motor designed by George Westinghouse.
Today, the small car companies are called Tesla, now partly owned by Mercedes, Fisker, which hopes to get its hybrid sportscar on the road by fall, and GEM, which was owned by Chrysler. All these small car companies make the electric and hybrid-electric cars that General Motors didn't pay much attention to until it was too late.
GM's Chapter 11 bankruptcy comes on the same day that another bankruptcy court authorized the sale of most of Chrysler's assets to Italy's Fiat, which brings Chrysler out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
An American icon is fallen. And it's taken down thousands of jobs, bank accounts and retirement plans.
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