Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech, and I occasionally like
Speaker 1: to look at the history of car companies. Car cars
Speaker 1: tech after all. And you know, the stories behind car
Speaker 1: companies are often fascinating, and typically they're really complicated. They
Speaker 1: frequently involved strategic partnerships and acquisitions and mergers and other
Speaker 1: big moves that can make it a little tricky to
Speaker 1: trace a history in any kind of linear way. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna try to do that today, because nothing worth
Speaker 1: doing is ever easy or something. So we're going to
Speaker 1: explore the history and the impact of General Motors, which
Speaker 1: you could argue is one of the big origin stories
Speaker 1: for how the automotive industry got so complicated in the
Speaker 1: first place. And like a lot of my episodes, this
Speaker 1: story will actually begin before there was any General Motors
Speaker 1: to speak of, and it will go on after GM
Speaker 1: ceases to be because spoiler alert, that happened the General
Speaker 1: Motors today is not the same as the one that
Speaker 1: was founded more than a century ago. Now, to talk
Speaker 1: about the history of general motors. We actually need to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the history of the automobile itself,
Speaker 1: and more to the point, the history of automobile companies. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do an exhaustive history here, because
Speaker 1: that would require talking about all sorts of stuff that
Speaker 1: doesn't actually apply to general motors, like air propelled land
Speaker 1: vehicles that used wind power, or compressed air engine vehicles,
Speaker 1: or steam powered tricycles and wagons and all that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. We're instead going to skip ahead to the
Speaker 1: era of the internal combustion engine, the gasoline powered engine.
Speaker 1: But if you if you folks want me to do
Speaker 1: an episode talking about the various early attempts to build
Speaker 1: a horseless carriage and the different methods that people tried,
Speaker 1: let me know, and we'll all take a very historical
Speaker 1: and extremely bumpy road trip together. Now, the first automobiles
Speaker 1: powered by internal combustion engines originated in the mid nineteenth
Speaker 1: century around the eighteen sixties, but it really wasn't until
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties that engineers stuck around with experimenting with
Speaker 1: these things long enough to make automobiles that were more
Speaker 1: than just a curiosity. Carl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler independently
Speaker 1: did this, but ultimately their work would converge later on
Speaker 1: with the formation of the company Daimler a G also
Speaker 1: known as Mercedes Benz, but that would happen in the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, and Carlin Gottlieb never actually met one another.
Speaker 1: But the early days of the automobile were really uncertain,
Speaker 1: to say the least. While people like Ben's and Daimler
Speaker 1: were building automobiles as sort of a proof of concept
Speaker 1: and occasionally racing them against other people who are making
Speaker 1: similar type of vehicles, getting any sort of substantial investment
Speaker 1: behind the effort was difficult. So people were not yet
Speaker 1: convinced that a horseless carriage really had any legs so
Speaker 1: to speak, or wheels, I guess anyway, they weren't sure
Speaker 1: that these automobiles were ever going to be something that
Speaker 1: people would actually use. Meanwhile, over in the United States,
Speaker 1: a guy named George B. Selden applied for a patent
Speaker 1: as the inventor of the automobile. He did that in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy nine. Now that pre dates Ben's and Dameler's
Speaker 1: automobiles from the eighteen eighties. However, the Patent Office didn't
Speaker 1: award Selden the patent until eighteen nine. Selden had never
Speaker 1: actually built an automobile. He just presented the design for one,
Speaker 1: so he gets the patent in eight and that was
Speaker 1: after Ben's and Dameler had already built their internal combustion
Speaker 1: powered automobiles. And so there's a little debate. It's putting
Speaker 1: it lightly about who the inventor of the automobile really was,
Speaker 1: But honestly, I would say it's all kind of meaningless
Speaker 1: for a couple of different reasons. One is that, like
Speaker 1: most really big inventions, the automobile is really more of
Speaker 1: the product of a lot of different people working on
Speaker 1: different things, and ultimately those various forms of work converged,
Speaker 1: so you can't really assign the invention to just one person.
Speaker 1: For another, all these people are dead, so you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a moot point. Now just watch just
Speaker 1: because I said that, I bet my car is going
Speaker 1: to get haunted by angry German ghosts. I'm kidding. I
Speaker 1: don't believe in cars, I mean ghosts. By the early
Speaker 1: eighteen nineties, the United States was starting to see engineers
Speaker 1: building out cars that would form the foundation of future
Speaker 1: companies such as the Durya motor wagon Company, which may
Speaker 1: thirteen whole cars in eighteen nineties six. Now, the reason
Speaker 1: I wanted to start with all this is that the
Speaker 1: General Motors Company began not as an automobile company all
Speaker 1: of itself, but rather as a holding company that bought
Speaker 1: existing automobile companies. So, in other words, GM started out
Speaker 1: as a means of consolidating multiple car companies in an
Speaker 1: effort to combine resources and share the load across different
Speaker 1: groups of mechanics, engineers, inventors, salespeople, and so on. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about some of the companies that would form
Speaker 1: the early foundation of General Motors before we get to
Speaker 1: GM itself. One of the earliest companies GM would purchase
Speaker 1: is Buick, which was founded by David Dunbar Buick. He
Speaker 1: was born in Scotland in eighteen fifty four and his
Speaker 1: family immigrated to America when David was just two years old.
Speaker 1: His father, who was a carpenter, passed away when David
Speaker 1: was still a child, and his mother remarried a native
Speaker 1: Detroit man who owned a candy shop. As a teenager,
Speaker 1: David worked for a manufacturing company that made plumbing fixtures
Speaker 1: in Detroit, Michigan. He apprenticed with a machine shop in Detroit,
Speaker 1: but then returned to that plumbing manufacturing company and became
Speaker 1: a foreman there. Bewick himself became something of an inventor
Speaker 1: and an engineer. He secured several patents for various inventions
Speaker 1: and processes, including one that would allow you to bind
Speaker 1: porcelain to cast iron that led to the development of
Speaker 1: really large porcelain bathtubs, among other things that were incredibly
Speaker 1: fashionable at the time. Buick and a business partner named
Speaker 1: William Sherwood subsequently purchased the manufacturing company, which had fallen
Speaker 1: into a bit of financial shambles, and they renamed it
Speaker 1: the Buick and Sherwood Manufacturing Company. While the company saw
Speaker 1: great success, Bewick himself was a little bit restless. He
Speaker 1: had become fascinated by gas lean fueled engines, not just automobiles,
Speaker 1: mind you. In fact, that wasn't really foremost in his mind.
Speaker 1: He was just interested in these gasoline powered engines that
Speaker 1: could do all sorts of different work, including stationary engines
Speaker 1: for stuff like industrial uses. By eight seven, Buick had
Speaker 1: dedicated some of his company's manufacturing capabilities to producing gasoline
Speaker 1: fueled engines intended to be used on farm equipment. Sherwood, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: was becoming a little mift that Buick was not tending
Speaker 1: to the plumbing fixtures company, and ultimately the two decided
Speaker 1: to part ways. Buick liquidated his ownership of the company
Speaker 1: he owned with Sherwood, and he used that substantial sum
Speaker 1: to found a new enterprise called Buick Auto, Vim and
Speaker 1: Power Company in nineteen o one. One of Buick's engineers
Speaker 1: was a guy named Walter Maher who had been building
Speaker 1: gasoline fueled engines for boats. Now, the story goes that
Speaker 1: Mar wanted to build a full automobile at Buicks company,
Speaker 1: but David resisted. He thought it was safer to build
Speaker 1: engines and not worry about stuff like automobiles. Like build
Speaker 1: the engines four automobiles, sure, but don't need you don't
Speaker 1: need to build the whole automobile yourself. Mar and Buick
Speaker 1: had some spats, with Marv, you know, quitting and returning
Speaker 1: a couple of times before that quitting stuck in nineteen
Speaker 1: o two, whereupon Mar would actually work with another person.
Speaker 1: We're going to chat about Ransom, Eli Olds and Mars
Speaker 1: replacement was a machinist named Eugene Richard. Also around this time,
Speaker 1: Buick reorganized and renamed his company, now calling it the
Speaker 1: Buick Manufacturing Company. Guess all that VIM must have worn
Speaker 1: out by then, Buick did produce a couple of car prototypes.
Speaker 1: By nineteen o three, the company wasn't a bit of
Speaker 1: trouble as investors were starting to get nervous and pull
Speaker 1: out of the company. But then Frank and Benjamin brisco
Speaker 1: the Briscoe brothers, swooped in to help fund Buick's efforts
Speaker 1: to produce a Buick branded automobile. The Briscos owned a
Speaker 1: sheet metal business, and they saw this as a way
Speaker 1: to bring different but related businesses together for mutual benefit.
Speaker 1: Benjamin Briscoe would end up buying the first official Buick
Speaker 1: for himself, and the company went through another reorganization and
Speaker 1: transformed into the Buick Motor Company, with the Briscoes overseeing
Speaker 1: the financials, so they had a substantial stake in the company.
Speaker 1: They essentially owned it, and now Buick was working for
Speaker 1: the Briscoes. The first Buick, apart from an earlier prototype
Speaker 1: that Buick had sold off, was an open air vehicle
Speaker 1: and you'll hear this a few times in this episode.
Speaker 1: It had a padded bench like seat mounted more or
Speaker 1: less in the middle lengthwise anyway of the chassis. The
Speaker 1: driver would steer the vehicle using a steering wheel, but
Speaker 1: that was not always a given in early motor cars.
Speaker 1: In fact, the prototype the Buick had produced earlier, the
Speaker 1: one that he had sold to his former engineer Mar,
Speaker 1: you had to steer with a handle, not a wheel.
Speaker 1: It was more like a like a rudder style steering mechanism. Now,
Speaker 1: that original prototype that he sold to Mar was sold
Speaker 1: for two dollars. How about that? If you adjust that
Speaker 1: for inflation, that would be around seven thousand bucks today. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what the actual Buicks, the first run
Speaker 1: Buicks sold for the ones that are being produced for
Speaker 1: actual external customers. I only know that that Mar paid
Speaker 1: two dollars for that original prototype. Now, I do know
Speaker 1: that the early Buicks, such as the Model B touring cars,
Speaker 1: were modest in power. No big surprise there. The Model
Speaker 1: B had a horsepower rating of fifteen to twenty one horsepower. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're not a car person, and I'm not much
Speaker 1: of one, you might wonder what horsepower actually means it's
Speaker 1: a unit of measurement for engine power, and it's the
Speaker 1: amount of power needed to move five hundred fifty pounds
Speaker 1: one foot in one second, or the amount of power
Speaker 1: needed to move thirty three thousand pounds one foot in
Speaker 1: one minute. The term dates back to the days of
Speaker 1: James Watt as he was trying to convince people to
Speaker 1: buy steam engine machinery. He was comparing how powerful his
Speaker 1: steam engines were two horses, which were the main source
Speaker 1: of power generation for a lot of industries these days.
Speaker 1: The typical American car generates a hundred twenty horsepower those
Speaker 1: you might imagine. There's quite a range on this due
Speaker 1: to different types of cars on the market, so a
Speaker 1: fifteen to twenty one horsepower vehicle is much less powerful
Speaker 1: than what you would typically drive today. Now, the Briscoe
Speaker 1: brothers did not hold on to Buick for very long.
Speaker 1: They sold their steak and thus their control of the company,
Speaker 1: to another corporation called Flint Wagon Works in Flint, Michigan.
Speaker 1: David Buick was now working for a totally different company
Speaker 1: in a man named William Durant, another person that we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about a lot a bit later, came
Speaker 1: in and purchased controlling interest in Buick from the Flint
Speaker 1: Wagon Works. By the end of nineteen o four, the
Speaker 1: Buick Company had produced just thirty seven automobiles, but since
Speaker 1: this was in the early days of the automobile industry
Speaker 1: in the United States, that thirty seven automobiles meant that
Speaker 1: Buick was just in second place across the nation. First
Speaker 1: place was being held by Henry Ford's Motor Company. Durant
Speaker 1: would make Bwick the centerpiece of the company he intended
Speaker 1: to build, which I'm sure you've all figured out now
Speaker 1: would eventually be General Motors. Now, before I move on,
Speaker 1: I would like to talk about what happened to David
Speaker 1: Dunbar Buick, and it's a bit of a sad story.
Speaker 1: So he was now working for William Durant, but he
Speaker 1: had also had a seat on the board of directors. However,
Speaker 1: Durant began to push Buick further out from any meaningful
Speaker 1: role in the company. Kind of makes me think of
Speaker 1: how Steve Jobs was treated in the eighties over at Apple.
Speaker 1: And it seems as though Mr Buick was a disagreeable
Speaker 1: sort who often found himself at odds with other disagreeable
Speaker 1: sorts a lot of cantankerous people in the automotive industry.
Speaker 1: In the early days, there were a lot of oil
Speaker 1: and water mixtures in other words. Also, Buick's health was
Speaker 1: taking a turn for the worse and he really wanted
Speaker 1: to move someplace west to live in a climate that
Speaker 1: was less humid. He left Durant's employ in nineteen o
Speaker 1: nine with a huge severance check and some stocks, and
Speaker 1: he moved to California. There he founded an oil company,
Speaker 1: and he ran into some trouble when The New York
Speaker 1: Times named the securities firm that represented the Buick Oil
Speaker 1: company had been guilty of stock fraud transactions. So it
Speaker 1: wasn't his company, but rather the securities firm that represented
Speaker 1: his company that got in trouble, but that meant he
Speaker 1: got wrapped up in it as well, and as a consequence,
Speaker 1: Buick's oil concern was effectively wiped out. He subsequently got
Speaker 1: involved in real estate deals in Florida, which sounds like
Speaker 1: the to Glen Garry Glenn Ross. Anyway, that didn't work
Speaker 1: out either, and he did have a brief return to
Speaker 1: running an automotive manufacturing company with the Lorraine Motors Corporation,
Speaker 1: but saw little success there either. By night he was
Speaker 1: living in poverty, and he passed away the following year,
Speaker 1: very sad. While Buicks vehicles would serve as the entry
Speaker 1: point for Durance foray into the automotive industry, he would
Speaker 1: acquire a bunch of other companies and thus car models.
Speaker 1: When we come back, we'll learn about some of the
Speaker 1: other cars that joined the GM family shortly after Durant
Speaker 1: had founded the company. But first, let's take a quick break. Now,
Speaker 1: let us turn to another pioneer in the automobile business
Speaker 1: whose work would become part of the young General Motors. Now,
Speaker 1: have you heard of Oldsmobile? Some of you younger listeners
Speaker 1: out there may not have heard of it at all,
Speaker 1: as GM stopped making vehicles branded as Oldsmobiles back in
Speaker 1: two thousand four. For those who have heard of it,
Speaker 1: you might be surprised to learn that the name Oldsmobile
Speaker 1: comes from the man who founded the original Oldsmobile company
Speaker 1: comes from his name, Ransom Eli Mobile. Wait, no, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Ransom Eli Olds born in eighteen sixty four in Ohio.
Speaker 1: His family made the move to Lansing, Michigan, Michigan obviously
Speaker 1: the birthplace of the automotive industry in the United States.
Speaker 1: They moved there when Ransom was just a kid. He
Speaker 1: grew up interested in mechanical systems, and by the mid
Speaker 1: eighteen eighties he was experimenting with building steam powered automobiles.
Speaker 1: He graduated to gasoline powered cars in eighteen ninety six.
Speaker 1: By eighteen ninety nine, he had founded the Olds Motor
Speaker 1: Works Company, securing financial backing from a dude who was
Speaker 1: really into wood, but that I mean Samuel L. Smith,
Speaker 1: who owned a large lumber operations and had amassed a
Speaker 1: significant amount of wealth. By nineteen o one, the first
Speaker 1: Oldsmobiles were available for purchase, and by nineteen o four
Speaker 1: the company had sold five thousand of them. There was
Speaker 1: a terrible fire at the Oldsmobile manufacturing facility, and the
Speaker 1: only prototype to survive the fire was a design called
Speaker 1: the Oldsmobile curved dash Runabout. Runabout is a style of
Speaker 1: early automobile, and you should search for images of this
Speaker 1: vehicle and you'll have an appreciation of what a car
Speaker 1: was back at the turn of the twentieth century. The
Speaker 1: runabout is an open air vehicle and it looks a
Speaker 1: little bit like a sleigh, but with wheels instead of
Speaker 1: you know, sleds or skis, and it has a handle
Speaker 1: for steering, sort of like the old fashioned rudder steering
Speaker 1: mechanisms I was mentioning earlier, before everyone got fancy and
Speaker 1: started using steering wheels. Now, at the time, it cost
Speaker 1: six hundred fifty dollars to buy one of these babies,
Speaker 1: which if we had just for inflation, would be right
Speaker 1: around nineteen thousand dollars in today's money, so not an
Speaker 1: unreasonable amount for a new car. Olds was known for
Speaker 1: employing advertising and publicity in a savvy way early on
Speaker 1: in the automotive industry, so I suppose we can thank
Speaker 1: Ransom for the incredibly weird history of automobile dealership commercials.
Speaker 1: He also used a stationary assembly line, the same kind
Speaker 1: of thing that Ford also would end up doing. It
Speaker 1: was a stepping stone toward mass production, and it's what
Speaker 1: allowed Olds to build and sell so many cars within
Speaker 1: three years. And granted, I know that five thousand cars
Speaker 1: in three years is not a lot by today's standards,
Speaker 1: but we now live in the era of precision mass production,
Speaker 1: and this was before that. He also arranged to purchase
Speaker 1: transmission systems from the Dodge Brothers from the folks who
Speaker 1: built the Dodge cars. So the early days the automobile industry,
Speaker 1: we're both competitive and a little cozy. Also, in nineteen
Speaker 1: o four, Ransom had a falling out with Samuel and
Speaker 1: Olds would actually leave the company he had founded. He
Speaker 1: went on to create another car company, originally called R. E.
Speaker 1: Olds Motor Car Company but later just known as R. E. O,
Speaker 1: which had a quick rise and then a precipitous fall
Speaker 1: in the automotive industry. It became a leader in the
Speaker 1: industry in nineteen o seven, but then began to decline
Speaker 1: in nineteen o eight. After that roller coaster of a journey,
Speaker 1: Olds began working on other things, such as a lawnmower.
Speaker 1: So that's a shout out to a recent tech Stuff
Speaker 1: podcast where we learned how lawnmowers exist because medieval Europeans
Speaker 1: like to build castles, and he too would it involved
Speaker 1: in real estate in Florida. He retired in nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: five and would pass away in nineteen fifty. But Olds
Speaker 1: had left his original company in nineteen o four, so
Speaker 1: he wasn't part of the deal that would bring Oldsmobile
Speaker 1: to General Motors. Durant would acquire Oldsmobile, not long after
Speaker 1: he had already acquired Buick. And now let us consider Cadillac.
Speaker 1: So this company also has a bit of an odd history,
Speaker 1: and part of it goes back to Henry Ford. Ford
Speaker 1: gets a lot of credit for the success of the
Speaker 1: automotive industry in the United States in the early days,
Speaker 1: and for good reason. He was the most successful of
Speaker 1: all the car manufacturers at that time. But success wasn't
Speaker 1: always a guarantee with Ford. His first company, the Detroit
Speaker 1: Automobile Company, began in eighteen ninety nine to a rather
Speaker 1: rocky start. He reorganized and renamed the company a couple
Speaker 1: of years later and called the new enterprise the Henry
Speaker 1: for Company. But Ford didn't see eyed eye with the
Speaker 1: people who actually fronted him the money to establish his company,
Speaker 1: and by nineteen o two Ford was out, but he
Speaker 1: took his name with him. His third company would go
Speaker 1: on to be the huge success. That's the actual Ford
Speaker 1: Motor Company, the third one. But let's go back to
Speaker 1: that second company for a second. What happened with that Well,
Speaker 1: once the tiff with Ford happened, the financiers behind the
Speaker 1: company decided they need to bring in an expert to
Speaker 1: figure out what the value of all their assets were
Speaker 1: so that they could liquidate them, sell them off, hopefully
Speaker 1: cover their investment, or at least mitigate any losses. So
Speaker 1: to that end, the investors called in a machinist in
Speaker 1: Detroit named Henry Leland, who had his own manufacturing company
Speaker 1: and who had produced engines for Oldsmobile previously. Leland came
Speaker 1: in and took a look around and said, say, Fellower's
Speaker 1: you really ought to stay in the business. You got
Speaker 1: yourselves the infrastructure to build your own ours, and you've
Speaker 1: already done enough work. That was some tinkering. We can
Speaker 1: make something special. I am paraphrasing, of course, but the
Speaker 1: investors agreed and Leland got to work. He called both
Speaker 1: the car and the company Cadillac, named after the French
Speaker 1: explorer and self proclaimed noble Antoine Lamme de Lamot Cadillac.
Speaker 1: That's the guy who founded Detroit. Also, as I say,
Speaker 1: historians believe that he was not in fact a noble
Speaker 1: as he called himself, but rather just assumed that. Either way,
Speaker 1: he is credited for founding Detroit, and Leland's original design
Speaker 1: was a bit of a Frankenstein's Monster kind of thing,
Speaker 1: not an appearance, but in parts so he started with
Speaker 1: Ford's chassis design, which the company owned. Because Ford was
Speaker 1: so disgusted by his falling out with the investors that
Speaker 1: he didn't pursue the rights to the designs before he left.
Speaker 1: He kept the name so they couldn't call it the
Speaker 1: Ford come Penny or anything like that, but they owned
Speaker 1: everything else, and Leland decided to continue the design he
Speaker 1: had been working on for Oldsmobile for an engine. It
Speaker 1: was a design that the company had actually turned down,
Speaker 1: so it had a an Oldsmobile intended engine and a
Speaker 1: Ford chassis body. Leland's own manufacturing company would produce all
Speaker 1: the transmissions and the engine parts and other components for
Speaker 1: the new car. Well, this actually gives us a chance
Speaker 1: to talk about what it means to have a single
Speaker 1: cylinder engine. We need a quick rundown on what cylinders are. So,
Speaker 1: cylinders are the part of an engine that howls pistons,
Speaker 1: and a piston can move up and down the length
Speaker 1: of the cylinder inside the cylinder, kind of like a
Speaker 1: plunger in a syringe, and there's a tight seal inside
Speaker 1: the cylinder. There's typically like a piston ring that keeps
Speaker 1: a nice seal against the interior wall of that cylinder.
Speaker 1: Modern cars almost all used the same general roll approach
Speaker 1: to create motion. It's called a four stroke combustion cycle,
Speaker 1: also known as the Auto cycle. That's O. T T
Speaker 1: O named after Nicklaus Auto, who came up with the
Speaker 1: idea in the eighteen sixties, and the four strokes in
Speaker 1: question are called intake, compression, combustion, and exhaust. So imagine
Speaker 1: that you've got a vertical cylinder. Okay, we're looking at
Speaker 1: a cross section of a cylinder. Now, the plunger like
Speaker 1: piston comes up from the bottom of the cylinder. It
Speaker 1: never goes all the way out. It may withdraw to
Speaker 1: the point where the end of the piston is is
Speaker 1: essentially at the bottom of the cylinder, but still inside it.
Speaker 1: At the top of the cylinder, You've got a pair
Speaker 1: of valves and a spark plug. So one valve only
Speaker 1: allows a mixture of air and gas to enter the cylinder. However,
Speaker 1: it prevents anything from going back out the valve. That's
Speaker 1: how valves work. They allow one way direction of flow. Now,
Speaker 1: the other valve is an exhaust valve. It prevents anything
Speaker 1: from coming into the cylinder through the exhaust valve, but
Speaker 1: it will allow exhaust to go out at the proper
Speaker 1: part of the cycle, and the piston has a repeating
Speaker 1: cycle of moving up and down inside that cylinder. So
Speaker 1: when the piston is moving downward like it's just completed
Speaker 1: one cycle and now it's starting to move down the
Speaker 1: cylinder away from the intake valve, that valve opens and
Speaker 1: a mixture of air and a small amount of gasoline
Speaker 1: come into the cylinder through the intake valve. The exhaust
Speaker 1: valve remains shut, so the descending piston is kind of
Speaker 1: drawing in that mixture into the cylinder itself. Upon reaching
Speaker 1: the bottom of its stroke, the piston reverses direction and
Speaker 1: now it begins to move up the cylinder. The intake
Speaker 1: valve is shut and the exhaust valve is shut two,
Speaker 1: so the piston, acting like a plunger in a syringe,
Speaker 1: is actually compressing that mixture of air and gas. This
Speaker 1: is the compression stroke because is that mixture has nowhere
Speaker 1: to go. It can't escape the cylinder, so it has
Speaker 1: to be compressed. As the piston reaches the end of
Speaker 1: its trip up the cylinder, having compressed the gas and
Speaker 1: air as much as it can, the spark plug well
Speaker 1: it sparks and it ignites this mixture. This is the
Speaker 1: combustion stroke, and the power from that combustion, which is
Speaker 1: effectively an explosion with that compressed mixture of air and gas,
Speaker 1: that pushes the piston down forcefully, so it goes down
Speaker 1: the cylinder quite fast. So the piston goes back down
Speaker 1: to the bottom of its stroke. Then it reverses course,
Speaker 1: heading back up, and as it moves up, the cylinder's
Speaker 1: exhaust valve opens, and like the intake valve, it only
Speaker 1: works in one direction, so the piston drives out the
Speaker 1: exhaust in the cylinder out through the exhaust valve. When
Speaker 1: the piston comes up to the top of this stroke
Speaker 1: and starts moving back down again, the exhaust valve closes,
Speaker 1: the intake valve opens, and the whole cycle repeats itself.
Speaker 1: And the next episode, by the way, we'll talk more
Speaker 1: about those spark plugs, because this cycle requires initiation. It's
Speaker 1: not like it's perpetual motion. It doesn't just start and
Speaker 1: then never stop. You have to start that cycle system.
Speaker 1: But in the old old days you had to do
Speaker 1: that manually, So we'll talk more about that in the
Speaker 1: next episode. However, let's talk about the rest of this system.
Speaker 1: So the other end of the piston, the part that's
Speaker 1: not inside the cylinder, attaches to a crank shaft. So
Speaker 1: the reciprocal motion of move of the piston moving up
Speaker 1: and down transforms into rotational motion through interaction with the
Speaker 1: crank shaft that powers the drive train of the vehicle.
Speaker 1: So the repeated cycles of combustion or what give the
Speaker 1: vehicle the umph it needs to power the drive train
Speaker 1: and thus go into motion. It's kind of like those
Speaker 1: old hand cars that you would see on railroads, or
Speaker 1: at least movies and TV shows that would have the
Speaker 1: hand cars on rail roads. I think I've only seen
Speaker 1: two of those in real life in my entire life.
Speaker 1: But instead of using human powered force of pumping the
Speaker 1: handrails in order to get the cart moving, this is
Speaker 1: using the explosive power of ignited air and gas. And
Speaker 1: that's why it's an internal combustion engine. So the first
Speaker 1: Cadillacs had that single cylinder engine that was intended for Oldsmobile,
Speaker 1: so there was only one cylinder with that particular one
Speaker 1: with one piston in it providing the power for motion.
Speaker 1: Most cars today have either four or six cylinders, and
Speaker 1: most trucks have either six or eight. Generally speaking, more
Speaker 1: cylinders means that the vehicle will have more power, they
Speaker 1: will be able to climb steeper hills or go faster,
Speaker 1: but it also means greater fuel consumption and thus lower energy.
Speaker 1: So Henry Leland brought two different models of Cadillacs to
Speaker 1: the New York Auto Show in nineteen o three. One
Speaker 1: of the models was called to run About. Just like
Speaker 1: the other vehicle I talked about earlier, this was a
Speaker 1: two seater vehicle, and then you had the to Know
Speaker 1: and that had two additional seats, essentially a second bench
Speaker 1: added behind the first bench, so you then had a
Speaker 1: four seater. They were a big hit at the New
Speaker 1: York Auto Show. Leland sold all three of the cars
Speaker 1: that he brought to show off, and he started to
Speaker 1: take orders for more than two thousand vehicles at the show.
Speaker 1: Those orders required a ten dollar deposit, which went toward
Speaker 1: the seven hundred fifty dollar sales price for a Runabout
Speaker 1: that to Know, which doubled that vehicular capacity to four writers,
Speaker 1: would cost an extra one dollars on top of that,
Speaker 1: in Leland decided to experiment a little bit more and
Speaker 1: he ordered the design and construction of a prototyped Cadillac.
Speaker 1: He named the Osceola, and machinists named Fred J. Fisher
Speaker 1: was put in charge of creating the vehicle, and he
Speaker 1: led a team of mechanics to something really interesting. So
Speaker 1: what set this vehicle apart from most others at the
Speaker 1: time was that this Cadillac had a closed body, so
Speaker 1: it protected the rider the driver from the elements. It
Speaker 1: had windows on all four sides looking out from the
Speaker 1: passenger cabin, which was pretty snug. I think it looks
Speaker 1: to me like you could really only fit one person
Speaker 1: in there comfortably. And it had a top speed of
Speaker 1: forty miles per hour with a ten horse power single
Speaker 1: cylinder engine. The drive train was a chain drive, which
Speaker 1: provided power to two rear wheels on the car, so
Speaker 1: it was a rear wheel drive vehicle. The prototype is
Speaker 1: pretty darn cute. If you want to look it up,
Speaker 1: look like the N five Osceola that's O S C
Speaker 1: E O L A. If you want to see a
Speaker 1: picture of it. Um. It was a little too tall
Speaker 1: for its small chassis. If you look at it, you
Speaker 1: can kind of see that it's it's the chassis doesn't
Speaker 1: extend very far out, so it's kind of taller than
Speaker 1: it is long, and that made it a bit top
Speaker 1: heavy and thus not the safest of cars if you're
Speaker 1: driving around sharp turns. The experiment did teach Fisher and
Speaker 1: his team a great deal, and before long Cadillac began
Speaker 1: offering closed bodied vehicles as an option for buyers, and
Speaker 1: by nineteen ten they made it so that the closed
Speaker 1: body model was standard. In nineteen o eight, Sir Thomas
Speaker 1: art do War, a member of the UK Parliament, awarded
Speaker 1: Cadillac the third Everdwar Trophy and the first to ever
Speaker 1: go to an American car maker. The reason he gave
Speaker 1: the award to Cadillac was because of Leland's approach to
Speaker 1: using interchangeable parts during car construction, which made it really
Speaker 1: easy to produce and repair vehicles. So the story behind
Speaker 1: Douar was convinced as a pretty fun one. A British
Speaker 1: distributor for Cadillac brought three Cadillacs to a test facility.
Speaker 1: Then he had mechanics disassemble all three of those Cadillacs,
Speaker 1: then mix up all the parts between those three, reassemble
Speaker 1: those parts back into cars, and then test each of
Speaker 1: those cars on a five hundred mile series of courses.
Speaker 1: All three vehicles passed the tests with flying colors, showing
Speaker 1: that the parts from one Cadillac were exactly the same
Speaker 1: as any other thanks to the precision of the manufacturing process.
Speaker 1: And that's the reason why de War gave Cadillac the
Speaker 1: award for that innovation, because he saw that as pushing
Speaker 1: the invention of the automobile forward in nineteen o nine,
Speaker 1: On July twenty nine, General Motors acquired the Cadillac Automobile
Speaker 1: Company for the princely sum of four and a half
Speaker 1: million dollars. Today that would be closer to a hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty one million dollars. Durant actually convinced Henry Leland's
Speaker 1: son Wilfred, to sell the company, but Henry Leland did
Speaker 1: stay on as an executive with General Motors until nine
Speaker 1: teen seventeen, whereupon he had a tiff with GM's leader Durant,
Speaker 1: who I swear we're going to cover before we get
Speaker 1: to the end of this episode, because he had a
Speaker 1: as a pretty crazy story too, and Leland founded a
Speaker 1: new car company called Lincoln Motor Company. Now ultimately Lincoln
Speaker 1: would become part of Henry Ford's automotive empire. Pretty interesting
Speaker 1: in for someone who had started off as one of
Speaker 1: Henry Ford's most fierce competitors. Leland and Ford really win
Speaker 1: at it, so it was interesting that the Lincoln Car
Speaker 1: Company would end up going over to Ford. Leland himself
Speaker 1: would pass away in nineteen two. Now we've got a
Speaker 1: few more bits and bobs to talk about when it
Speaker 1: comes to the founding of General Motors, which we will
Speaker 1: get to after these messages. Okay, Buick, Oldsmobile, Cadillac. These
Speaker 1: were three of the big names brought together by General Motors.
Speaker 1: Another one was Oakland, though you're more likely to have
Speaker 1: heard of Oakland's successor, Pontiac, or maybe you haven't heard
Speaker 1: of either of them, as GM discontinued the Pontiac brand
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine. But let's get to their history.
Speaker 1: Now we get to learn about Edward Murphy. Born in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty three. Murphy started off apprenticing with hardware dealers,
Speaker 1: and over the years he gained knowledge and experience, and
Speaker 1: by eighteen ninety three was ready to go into business
Speaker 1: with his father in law. Together they created the Pontiac
Speaker 1: Buggy Company as an horse drawn buggies business went fairly
Speaker 1: well for a time, but the clock was ticking, and
Speaker 1: by the early nineteen hundreds Murphy saw that there was
Speaker 1: no future and horse drawn buggies. Murphy partnered with a
Speaker 1: mechanic and designer named Lanson Partridge Brush, who had previously
Speaker 1: worked with Henry Leland back at Oldsmobile when they were
Speaker 1: making engines for that company, and then he followed Leland
Speaker 1: onto Cadillac and assisted in the design of the Cadillac
Speaker 1: one cylinder engine. So yeah, this is the guy who
Speaker 1: designed the engine that Oldsmobile initially turned down and that
Speaker 1: subsequently became the original Cadillac engine. There are no records
Speaker 1: of Brush having ever attended anything beyond high school level education,
Speaker 1: so the general consensus is that he was a very
Speaker 1: gifted designer who learned through observation and experience. Murphy and
Speaker 1: Brush and some investors created the Oakland Motor Club in
Speaker 1: nineteen o seven and began making cars in nineteen o eight.
Speaker 1: They named it after Oakland County, Michigan. The city of
Speaker 1: Pontiac is there. Brush would leave before the end of
Speaker 1: nineteen o eight, hoping to pursue his own dream of
Speaker 1: building a car with a two cylinder engine and getting
Speaker 1: some money from the Brisco brothers. See I told you
Speaker 1: the automotive world in Detroit was a pretty small one.
Speaker 1: Brush would go on to found the Brush Runabout Company,
Speaker 1: but that company went out of business a few years later.
Speaker 1: But Brush went on to have a successful career as
Speaker 1: a consulting engineer. He worked for numerous companies over the
Speaker 1: following years. He passed away in nineteen fifty two. Back
Speaker 1: at the Oakland Motor Company, Durant approached Murphy with an offer,
Speaker 1: and Murphy sold off his share in the Oakland Motor
Speaker 1: Company in nineteen o nine. Tragically, he died not long
Speaker 1: after making this deal. He passed away in the summer
Speaker 1: of nineteen o nine. At that point, Durant was able
Speaker 1: to convince the other shareholders in Oakland Motor Company to
Speaker 1: sign their steak over to General Motors. GM would later
Speaker 1: create the Pontiac brand as a sort of spinoff of Oakland.
Speaker 1: Only the Pontiac cars sold better than the Oakland ones did,
Speaker 1: so then GM decided to phase out the Oakland brand
Speaker 1: and keep Pontiac around for several decades. I'm sure we'll
Speaker 1: talk about that more in the next episode. Now, there
Speaker 1: are some other companies that General Motors acquired early on
Speaker 1: with names that might not be as familiar to you
Speaker 1: unless you're a car history buff So, for example, another
Speaker 1: company Durant acquired in n nine was the Ewing Automobile Company,
Speaker 1: previously known as the Cleveland Auto Cab Company. The Cleveland
Speaker 1: Auto Cab Company was to produce a car called Geneva,
Speaker 1: but then the company owners decided to rename the brand
Speaker 1: Ewing after Levi Edward Ewing, a major investor in the
Speaker 1: company that particular Ewing. Levi would then go on to
Speaker 1: buy the company itself. While Ewing was able to produce
Speaker 1: around thirty vehicles, it was impossible to scale up operations
Speaker 1: in Geneva, Ohio. There just wasn't enough of a talent
Speaker 1: pool for an experienced workforce in that part of the
Speaker 1: country as far as automobiles were concerned. You know, At
Speaker 1: that time the company was poised to relocate to Erie, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: But before that could happen, Durant came in with his
Speaker 1: offer and Ewing accepted it. The Ewing line wouldn't make
Speaker 1: it very far in the history of GM. General Motors
Speaker 1: would discontinue it in nineteen eleven. Other companies that GM
Speaker 1: acquired early on included Carter Car, the Rapid Motor Vehicle Company,
Speaker 1: and the Reliance Motor Truck Company, which was sort of
Speaker 1: the ancestor to GMC trucks. The Carter Car was really interesting,
Speaker 1: largely because it featured a friction drive, but I don't
Speaker 1: quite have enough time to go into that in this episode.
Speaker 1: Maybe in the next one. Now, if you've listened to
Speaker 1: my episodes about businesses that make lots of acquisitions, you
Speaker 1: know that that kind of a strategy is a risky one.
Speaker 1: And that's because all these acquisitions begin to pile up,
Speaker 1: and at the same time, you're accruing a lot of
Speaker 1: debt because you have to spend a ton of money
Speaker 1: to buy these companies. Manufacturing cars is also pretty expensive,
Speaker 1: so you still have your operating expenses to deal with
Speaker 1: on top of all these acquisitions, and then there's all
Speaker 1: the distribution and sales side of the business. So GM
Speaker 1: was in kind of a precarious position. It spent an
Speaker 1: awful lot of investors money, and there was the danger
Speaker 1: that the company might over extend itself and then it
Speaker 1: would just be a massive debt machine. And this brings
Speaker 1: us to finally talk about William C. Durant, the man
Speaker 1: largely responsible for creating General motors. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty one, but he grew up in Flint, Michigan.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of the other people I mentioned in
Speaker 1: this episode, Durant found a living originally working in the
Speaker 1: carriage industry, as in the horse drawn carriage industry. In
Speaker 1: eighteen eight six, he co founded the Durant Dort Company
Speaker 1: and manufactured carriages, which made Flint the carriage capital of
Speaker 1: the United States. As various investors and engineers developed early automobiles,
Speaker 1: Durant saw both an existential threat to his business as
Speaker 1: well as a huge opportunity. I mean it was a
Speaker 1: threat and that should these horseless carriages prove reliable and
Speaker 1: as full, it would inevitably lead to the decline of
Speaker 1: the carriage business. But it was an opportunity, and that
Speaker 1: if someone could build out a business that could find
Speaker 1: a way to produce cars in enough volume to sell
Speaker 1: them at moderate prices, you could make a killing. And
Speaker 1: that's what led Durant to make his first acquisition of Buick.
Speaker 1: But that wouldn't be enough to achieve his goal. He
Speaker 1: needed to add other companies for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 1: One was that he needed to increase the scale of
Speaker 1: production to bring those costs down, and it was way
Speaker 1: easier to buy out somebody else who had already done
Speaker 1: the work of creating a manufacturing facility and also a
Speaker 1: manufacturing process. Then it would be to build that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff out from scratch. At least, it's easier as
Speaker 1: long as you had people willing to give you money
Speaker 1: so that you could do it, and Durant had those people.
Speaker 1: But another big reason was that Durant could see that
Speaker 1: different people had different preferences when it came to automobiles,
Speaker 1: just like everything else in life. So it made sense
Speaker 1: to offer up of a rye any of different options.
Speaker 1: Some might appeal to one person but not another, and
Speaker 1: so on. So he began to envision a business in
Speaker 1: which different types of cars could occupy slightly different places
Speaker 1: in the market. You could have cars that cost a
Speaker 1: little bit less, maybe they're a little less flashy, little
Speaker 1: less powerful, but you could appeal to people who want
Speaker 1: a car, but they can't afford the more impressive or
Speaker 1: luxurious models. So you can build up different lines of
Speaker 1: cars marketed under different brands and aimed at different potential customers.
Speaker 1: That was sort of the early thinking, though Durant hadn't
Speaker 1: made much progress on that by at which point things
Speaker 1: went rather pear shaped for Durant for a bit. Durant's
Speaker 1: acquisitions had spooked his investors, who were worried that their
Speaker 1: money was just going to sink into an ever expanding
Speaker 1: group of car companies and that they would never see
Speaker 1: their money back. It would just be a big problem
Speaker 1: labeled General Motors. The investors and Durant had a big
Speaker 1: old corporate battle, and Durant was the loser. He had
Speaker 1: pushed the company to the point that it needed some
Speaker 1: significant help from the financial industry to cover the considerable
Speaker 1: debt that it had accrued, and Durant was shown the door.
Speaker 1: He had essentially founded General Motors in nineteen o eight
Speaker 1: and was out by nineteen ten. But this is not
Speaker 1: the end of his history with General Motors. Heck, it's
Speaker 1: not even the end of him getting kicked out of
Speaker 1: General Motors. See when he was given the boot, Durant
Speaker 1: landed on his feet. See I always land on my
Speaker 1: rear end anyway. One year after being ousted from General Motors,
Speaker 1: he co founded a new car company called Chevrolet. This
Speaker 1: company took its name from a couple of the other
Speaker 1: co founders, brothers Louis and Arthur Chevrolet, and there were
Speaker 1: several other co founders involved as well, but that's a
Speaker 1: story all in itself. So Chevrolet built a manufacturing facility
Speaker 1: in Flint, Michigan. Chev La would make a few expensive
Speaker 1: cars that very few people could afford, but the company
Speaker 1: followed that up with a vehicle called the Series for ninety.
Speaker 1: It had that name because, at least originally, it sold
Speaker 1: for the princely sum of four nine dollars, which made
Speaker 1: it one of the most affordable cars on the market
Speaker 1: at the time. Durant and Louis Chevrolet had several differences
Speaker 1: of opinion, and ultimately Durant would buy out Chevrolet's shares
Speaker 1: in the company. The Series for ninety proved popular enough
Speaker 1: to fuel Durant's ambitions. Durant was building up more wealth,
Speaker 1: and with that wealth he was buying up shares of
Speaker 1: General Motors. He essentially bought himself back into the fold
Speaker 1: at GM, which became complete in an acquisition between General
Speaker 1: Motors and Chevrolet. By Durant was back in the driver's
Speaker 1: seat as it were, and the new company he would
Speaker 1: oversee became the General Motors Corporation. Durant had also made
Speaker 1: some friends, not not really friends, I guess, in the
Speaker 1: du Pont family, and they helped finance his takeover of
Speaker 1: General Motors. So to sum up, William Durant saw the
Speaker 1: opportunity to create an automotive empire that he would call
Speaker 1: General Motors. He took several different young car companies with
Speaker 1: varying degrees of success under their respective fan belts, and
Speaker 1: then brought them together to make cars at a larger scale.
Speaker 1: He even attempted at one point to buy the Henry
Speaker 1: Ford Company early on, but Ford would only accept a
Speaker 1: buyout offer if it was in cash, and Durant just
Speaker 1: didn't have that kind of cheddar on hand. Durant's acquisitions, however,
Speaker 1: made his investors nervous they pushed him out of the company.
Speaker 1: He co founds another car company, Chevrolet, builds that up,
Speaker 1: buys out most of his co founders, comes back, takes
Speaker 1: over GM again, and we're only scratching the surface of
Speaker 1: this remarkable story. There's so much more to talk about here,
Speaker 1: including what was going on at GM between Durant's remove
Speaker 1: in nineteen ten and his return in nineteen sixteen. That
Speaker 1: includes the incorporation of an electric starter, which won the
Speaker 1: company a second award from de War and also what
Speaker 1: happened to that friction drive of the car to car
Speaker 1: Where did that go? But if I were to cover
Speaker 1: all of that for this episode, it would run another
Speaker 1: forty minutes easy, and that's not even touching what happened
Speaker 1: in the years since about how General Motors would eventually
Speaker 1: go into bankruptcy and a new General Motors would emerge
Speaker 1: from it. But to get to that story, I've got
Speaker 1: to do part two of this episode, so be on
Speaker 1: the lookout for that next week. If you have any
Speaker 1: suggestions for things I should tackle in future episodes of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, let me know. Send me a message on Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle I use there is text Stuff hs W,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff
Speaker 1: is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H