Billy Durant: Creator of General Motors

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  • Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 Stars
 

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description:

Praise for the first edition:

"A fascinating book [and] a sympathetic look at the man who glued General Motors together and in the process made Flint one of the great industrial centers of America."
---Detroit Free Press

"It is refreshing to report that Billy Durant is one of the best researched books dealing with an automotive giant."
---Antique Automobile

"Billy Durant fills in a masterly way the only important void remaining concerning the work of the motorcar pioneers."
---Richard Crabb, author of Birth of a Giant: The Men and Incidents That Gave America the Motorcar

What explains Billy Durant's powerful influence on the auto industry during its early days? And why, given Durant's impact, has he been nearly forgotten for decades?

In search of answers to these questions, Lawrence Gustin interviewed Durant's widow, who provided a wealth of previously unpublished autobiographical notes, letters, and personal papers. Gustin also interviewed two of Durant's personal secretaries and others who had known and worked with the man who created General Motors. The result is the amazing account of the mastermind behind what would become, as the twentieth century progressed, the world's largest company.

Customer Reviews

 
When GM had creative management
Reviewer: M. A. Vargas (Chicago, Illinois, USA), Date of review: July 20, 2009
Avg. Customer Rating: 2 Stars
Watching the bankruptcy of General Motors made me want to learn more about its beginnings. I have the 2008 update of the original 1973 edition. The writing is in journalistic style (which can be very annoying), and I was often looking for more photos of the men and machines. But Gustin's story is clear: Durant was a free-wheeling dealer who probably wouldn't stand a chance in today's regulatory environment. You can't tell if his financial dealings were great business or near-scams (or a little of both), but he built and lost two personal fortunes and died broke. The books really needs to put Durant in context. It seems every local town had a car company and there is no overview of the auto industry. Production numbers and financial details don't mean much if you can't see the overall picture. (A couple of good graphs would have been very helpful.) The really smart guys tend to be Durant's arch-enemies: the New York bankers. One odd missing piece from Gustin's book: labor relations. How did they compare at GM to Ford? There is next to nothing said about the employees of GM. This is biography from the top down, but it is a revealing look at Billy "Willie" Durant's role in creating one of America's great companies. It's not a good business history but okay as popular biography.
Billy Durant
Reviewer: Lance Haynes (San Diego, Ca United States), Date of review: March 17, 2003
Avg. Customer Rating: 5 Stars

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

This is another good book on my hero Mr. William C. Durant the creator of GM. Mr. Durant defiantly affected the early automobile history more than any other one man ever. He was the worlds largest cart maker back in Flint Mi. & went on to save Buick from certain bankruptcy. Also creating GM with Buick as the cornerstone car & then adding Olds, Cadillac & Oakland (the forerunner to Pontiac) & many others that didn't pan out. He also started Chevrolet with his famous Buick race car driver Louis Chevrolet. Some other good reads are The Dream Maker 1979 by Bernard Weisberger and The Deal Maker by Axel Madsen 1999. Also some other really interesting info is the Durant website. Sincerely Lance Haynes President Durant Motors Automobile Club