William c. durant organizations founded

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William C. Durant

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William C. Durant
Person

Born: 8 December 1861
Died: 18 March 1947
Full Name: William Crapo Durant

An automobile industry pioneer and founder of General Motors.

Biography

The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's Automotive Industries page on 27 August 2019, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

William Crapo "Billy" Durant was a leading pioneer of the United States automobile industry, who created a system in which a company held multiple marques - each seemingly independent, with different automobile lines - bound under a unified corporate holding company. Durant, along with Frederic L. Smith, co-founded General Motors, as well as Chevrolet with Louis Chevrolet. He also founded Frigidaire.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Durant was the son of William Clark Durant and Rebe

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The General Of General Motors

On March 18, 1947, at 2:15 A.M. , William Crapo Durant, founder of General Motors and Chevrolet and the “leading bull” in the great stock-market boom and crash of the late 1920’s, died at his New York City apartment with his wife and nurse in attendance. His last fortune had evaporated in the Depression of the 1930’s, and he had been an invalid for several years. People were already beginning to confuse him with Will Durant, the popular historian of philosophy. Within a few weeks Henry Ford, whose automotive career strikingly paralleled Durant’s, was to die too—rich and famous but also ridiculed and despised. “Billy “Durant, on the other hand, left a public image that was clouded but untarnished. A eulogy in the Detroit Free Press said : “There was nothing of the ruthless pirate in Durant for all of his financial manipulations. Despite his fortunes and his power he was always a simple, human person, with a consciousness of the problems of the little fellow. … W. C. Durant typified the courage of American business, of free enterprise and initiative

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William C. Durant

American automotive businessman (1861–1947)

For the historian William James Durant, see Will Durant.

William Crapo Durant (December 8, 1861 – March 18, 1947) was a leading pioneer of the United States automobile industry, founder of General Motors and co-founder of Chevrolet. He created a system in which a company held multiple marques – each seemingly independent, with different automobile lines – bound under a unified corporate holding company. He also founded Frigidaire.

Biography

Durant was born in Boston, Massachusetts on December 8, 1861.^[4] He was the second child of William Clark Durant and Rebecca Folger Durant (née Crapo), who was born to a wealthy Massachusetts family of French descent.^[5] His mother, Rebecca, was the daughter of Michigan governor Henry H. Crapo, who was also of French descent. Durant's family moved to Flint, Michigan after his father abandoned the family in 1869.^[5] They lived with Rebecca's sister, Rhoda, and her husband James Wilson.^[5] William dropped out of high