Word: buick
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...David Buick (then 46) was a partner in the Detroit plumbing concern of Buick & Sherwood. At that time, Henry Ford was a machinist. R. E. Olds was making his first experiments with the Oldsmobile. Novel was the theory that a gasoline motor could furnish better transportation power than the horse. But Mr. Buick saw the future of the motor car. He sold his Buick & Sherwood interest...
...three years the $100,000 was gone. In its place was an engine that sometimes worked. Mr. Buick advertised in Detroit papers. He wanted a partner with capital. Among replies to the advertisement came a letter from one J. H. Whiting, Flint, Mich., banker and carriage maker. Mr. Whiting was willing to invest in the Buick automobile, provided that Mr. Buick could demonstrate the soundness of his invention by driving it from Detroit to Flint. The first Buick started out from Detroit under its own power, but was dragged back by a team of horses. It had broken down...
...methods. They began to build stationary engines as a kind of side line to keep themselves in business until their automobile was perfected. While they were arguing, others were acting. Ford had a car at $850. There was a Cadillac at $750 and an Oldsmobile at $650. But the Buick was a good car. It won competitive tests. Trade papers praised it. At last orders began to come in. Sales were rising; profits were in sight. But production costs increased also, made necessary another reorganization, another influx of capital...
This time Buick went to William Crapo Durant, then head of Durant-Dort Carriage Co. Now he had found someone who thought of financing in terms of good round figures. Under Durant direction, Buick stock salesmen went from door to door, sold stock to farmers, schoolteachers, clerks, widows, to any who would buy. And for once, at least, hardly any promise could have been made too glowing for the future performance, hardly any prospectus could have been phrased in too superlative terms. Able, persuasive, Durant raised for Buick more than $1,000,000. Now (1906) there was a good time...
Disappointed in motor cars, Mr. Buick determinedly tried his luck in other fields, and always with unfortunate results. He went to California and organized an oil company. To finance the oil company he sold much of his automobile stock. Then title litigation wrecked the oil company? expensive litigation that consumed the remainder of the stock. With what he saved from the oil disaster. Mr. Buick went into real estate. He became partner in a company that controlled many acres. Unfortunately, they were Florida acres, and when the Florida boom collapsed the last of Mr. Buick's fortune went with...