May 2, 1918: General Motors IS America! (General Motors Acquires Chevrolet)

A Brief History

On May 2, 1918, General Motors Corporation acquired the Delaware based Chevrolet Motor Company, its last major car company acquisition for decades. GM would grow to be the largest car manufacturer in the world from 1931 to 2007, a 77 year reign as king of the automakers no other company has matched. In recent years GM vies with Toyota and Volkswagen for the championship auto manufacturer title, with strong competition from Ford Motor Company, Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, and Fiat-Chrysler (which also makes Jeep and Dodge among its nameplates). GM sells about 8 to 10 million cars per year world-wide, many of which are produced in foreign countries.

Digging Deeper

While General Motors ruled the roost, the arrogance of the company was legendary. The attitude of “we’ll tell the people what they want” instead of reacting to changing customer needs and wants ‘drove’ the company from its lofty perch atop the car world and in 2009 the company went bankrupt and had to be rescued by the US Government in order to stay in business. The reorganized company was renamed General Motors Company. Once staple automotive names in the United States, GM companies such as Pontiac and Oldsmobile have been shut down, as have other GM subsidiaries such as Saturn and Hummer. In fact, GM once also was the parent company behind Opel, Vauxhall, McLaughlin, Oakland, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Hummer, Saab, Saturn, all of which either went out of business or were spun off from GM. GM also had many non-auto making companies, such as Frigidaire, Terex, Euclid, Detroit Diesel, Allison, AC Delco, GMAC (finance), Electro-Motive Diesel, Delco Electronics, General Aviation, North American Aviation, GM Defense, New Departure, and Electronic Data Systems (EDS, the company that H. Ross Perot made billions of dollars from). GM has also sold cars as joint ventures with other foreign car companies such as Toyota and Isuzu.

Cars sold under the GM umbrella today include Cadillac, Buick, Chevrolet and GMC (trucks and SUV’s) from its traditional portfolio, and foreign brand names such as Holden (Australia), Rayvon (Uzbekistan), Wuling, Baojun and Jie Fang (the last 3 joint ventures with Chinese companies). With factories on 6 continents (almost 400 facilities) in 35 countries, GM is hardly simply an American car company anymore. In fact, some Buick and Cadillac models are made in China for sale in the US! (Tell us, did you know that?) Like arch rival Ford, GM also produces cars in Canada and Mexico for sale in the US.

GM employs about 180,000 people worldwide (half as many as Toyota worldwide), and around 50,000 hourly union workers in the US, just a few hundred less than Ford. (GM had employed more Americans than Ford from the 1930’s until 2015.) For comparison, Fiat-Chrysler employs about 36,000 hourly union workers in the US. General Motors claim to have around 4 times as many total employees in the US than Toyota, especially among engineering and other non-hourly employees. (Toyota has perhaps 40,000 hourly union workers.)

The GM Renaissance Center in Detroit, Michigan.

Once an automotive juggernaut, GM used to sell about half of all the cars Americans bought, but now they are fortunate to sell a fifth of the American market. Innovators that came up with the self-starter and many other electric/electronic devices (thank you Charles Kettering) as well as the Corvette (with its fiberglass body), and the Corvair with its rear, air-cooled engine. The Corvair turned out to be a nightmare for GM, the subject of Ralph Nader’s book, Unsafe at any Speed. The 1980’s car diesel engine fiasco came on the heels of the laughably bad Vega and Chevette sub-compacts, and customers buying a premium name car such as Oldsmobile or Buick might find their car with a Chevrolet engine in the 1970’s and 1980’s. GM took the best selling Cutlass Supreme from the mid and late 1970’s and turned it into one of the ugliest American cars ever built, the 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass Salon, a bizarre hatchback that nauseates me to look at! The GM foray into front wheel drive cars (besides the Olds Toronado and Cadillac Eldorado), what they called “X-cars” were another group of miserable and ugly cars.

Exhibit featuring the book at Henry Ford Museum, Detroit

The gasoline crises of 1973 and 1979 forced American car makers into the smaller, more fuel-efficient car business, and Japanese automakers were much quicker to jump on that market while GM and other American companies lost tons of market share. Between losing market share and automation, car manufacturing jobs also disappeared rapidly in the US, changing the employment landscape in America forever, and changing General Motor’s role in American life. In 2017 the best selling GM model was the full sized pick-up truck called the Silverado (#2 to the Ford F-150 in US sales) while the top selling GM car in America in 2017 was the Chevrolet Equinox at a disappointing #12! No GM car in the Top 10 sellers in the US! (If you are young, you cannot imagine how bizarre that strikes us old people.)

Question for students (and subscribers): Do you drive a GM car or truck? Have you ever owned or leased one? What are your experiences with GM products? Feel free to comment on General Motors past and present in the comments section below this article.

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