Emblazoned on the side of the old General Motors building in Detroit are a series of large letter D’s that have left many a passerby wondering what they have to do with GM. They were put there to honor William Durant, the man who created General Motors, by the same people who pushed him out of General Motors.
Billy Durant is a legend; he’s the man who envisioned an enormous automobile company before anyone was even certain the automobile was here to stay. While co-owner of a large horse-drawn-wagon manufacturing company in Flint, Michigan, Durant invested in David Buick’s struggling car company and used it as the foundation of an empire. He was a better visionary than he was a manager, however, and in 1912 his nascent General Motors got
