Durant-Dort Carriage Company

This very successful business made the partners rich men and it became the core on which William C. Durant and J. Dallas Dort began to build General Motors.

Impressed with the smoothness of the ride, Durant went to Coldwater and bought the road-cart's patent and manufacturing rights from Schmedlin and O'Brien for $1500.

With Josiah Dallas Dort as an equal partner he founded Flint Road-Cart Company.

[4] By 1900 they were building 50,000 vehicles each year, from around 14 locations and they were a major rival of Flint Wagon Works.

A separate business named Diamond Buggy Company was established in 1896 to build low-priced carts sold for cash only.

Durant decided making their own components instead of buying them in would give Durant-Dort better control over costs and the ability to improve efficiency.

In 1902 he established his Flint Automobile Company and built over fifty cars with Weston-Mott axles and W F Stewart bodies.

The Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers demanded a licence fee of $50 for each engine Hardy had built so he ended production and "moved to Iowa".

Durant-Dort continued making horse-drawn vehicles until 1917 but from 1915 the factory and office buildings refocused on the manufacture of Dort Motor Car Company automobiles.

In 1898, J. Dallas Dort took a two-year leave of absence from his position as president of Durant-Dort, and Hardy stepped into his place.

[8] After Dort's return in 1900, Hardy took his own leave of absence, and while touring Europe discovered the automobile.

David Buick, already a minority partner in his own business, was left with a single share of his enterprise.