History of Chevrolet car

Louis Chevrolet and William C. Durant co-founded the Chevrolet Motor Company on November 3, 1911.

A seasoned automobile racer and highly respected self-taught engineer, Louis Chevrolet was born in Switzerland on Dec. 25, 1878 and moved to France with his family as a child.

He learned the basics of mechanics from his father, a watchmaker, and as a teenager used to build, repair, and race bicycles. At the age eleven he found employment in the Robin bicycle workshop.

He repaired coaches and bicycles, until one day he was sent to the "Hôtel de la Poste" to repair a steam-driven tricycle belonging to an American. This must have been the moment when Chevrolet fell in love twice. He fell in love with automobiles, and also with the idea of emigrating to America.

He immigrated to North America in 1900. By 1902, his younger brothers, Arthur and Gaston, had joined him. As early as 1905, Louis Chevrolet was winning notice as a fearless driver of the brutally primitive racing cars of the period.

In 1905, Chevrolet started work with Fiat, but again he did not stay long. A year later he moved to Philadelphia to work for Walter Christie.

In the meantime, Louis' fascination with engines had reached yet another dimension – carried away with the notion of speed, he became a racing driver.

He became a member of William C. Billy Durant's famed Buick racing team in 1909. Working with a designer in a rented loft in Detroit during 1910, Louis Chevrolet began to lay out the plans for the prototype car that would bear his name.

Chevrolet was racing Buicks for Durant, and Billy had encouraged him to design a car that would bring race-type handling to the public. Chevrolet accepted the challenge and went to work.

Looking to build a new automobile after leaving GM, the irrepressible Billy Durant made a deal with Louis Chevrolet to produce the well-known racer’s dream car. In 1912, Louis Chevrolet‘s $2,150 Series C “Classic Six,” a luxurious high-performance six-cylinder model, hit the streets of Detroit.

The Chevrolet Motor Company was incorporated on November 3, 1911, and Durant leased a plant on Detroit's West Grand Boulevard for building his Chevrolet car. Two other companies, the Little Motor Car Company and the Mason Motor Company, started in Flint, Michigan, that year and became part of the foundation of Chevrolet.

In late 1913, Louis Chevrolet parted company with Billy Durant, leaving behind the rights to produce cars bearing his name. In 1913, Durant moved the Chevrolet manufacturing cooperation from Detroit to Flint, next to the Little Factory and more than double output to 5987 cars.

Billy Durant, in late 1915, introduced the Chevrolet 490 into the low-priced field.

By 1919 and after a series of oustings and reinstatements, Durant became president of GM and Chevrolet went on to quickly become leader in sales as a General Motors Subdivision.
History of Chevrolet car

General Motors

General Motors
William Durant was the man who designed and built General Motors. About 1908, Durant began to buy small, successful automobile companies – Buick, Oldsmobile, Cadillac, and Chevrolet – and merged them into his new General Motors Corporation.

In an era of fierce competition among numerous small, fledging automakers, the idea of grouping together different automobile companies had been discussed by numerous investors in the early 1900s. After Durant, a major shareholder in Buick Motor Car Company, failed to convince Henry Ford and Ransom E. Olds to join him in such an organization, Durant decided to form his own holding company, General Motors in the fall 1908.

In 1916, he set up a separate subsidiary called United Motors to buy small, successful parts companies. His first acquisitions included Delco, which held Charles Kettering’s patents to the automotive self starter.

Durant ultimately bought about 20 supplier companies; his last acquisitions – in 1919, the year before he was ousted as GM’s CEO – was Fisher Body.

General Motors ushered in the age of mass consumerism with its installment buying and credit programs for car buyers in the 1920s. Coupled with its expansive lineup of cars – from humble Chevrolet to the mighty Cadillac – and yearly style changes, GM’s approach to selling cars was adapted throughout the industry as the standard for mass marketing durable goods to the U.S consumer.

From the start, Durant’s vision was clear: in contrast to Henry Ford’s approach of developing one leading automobile, GM would offer a spectrum of cars at different price levels.

Although GM suffered a downturn during the Great depression, it nevertheless enlarged its market share and after 1930 was ranked as the nation’s largest car maker, ahead of rival Ford Motor Company and the Chrysler Corporation.
General Motors