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.

[8] By 1890, the Durant-Dort Carriage Company, based in Flint, had become a leading manufacturer of horse-drawn vehicles and by the start of the 20th century, was the largest in the US.

[9] Durant was highly skeptical of automobiles, feeling that the bad smell of burnt fuel, along with the engines' loud sounds, made them inherently dangerous to the point where he would not let his daughter ride in one.

To begin this massive endeavor, Durant first set out to purchase Buick, then a local car company with few sales and large debts.

[11] With Durant pushing and marketing the Buick name, the company was able to become the best-selling automobile in America, outperforming earlier leaders Ford Motor Company, Cadillac, and Oldsmobile, and despite having no manufacturing line and only a few extant cars, orders tallied over 1100 - all of this by the time of the 1905 New York Automobile Show.

[10] On October 26, 1909, General Motors Holding acquired the Cartercar Company, founded four years earlier in Jackson, Michigan, by Byron J. Carter.

[15] Durant had arranged an $8 million deal to buy Ford in 1909, but the bankers turned him down and the board of directors of General Motors dismissed him.

The venture proved highly successful for Durant, and he was able to buy enough shares in GM to regain control, becoming its president in 1916.

He ran afoul of Cadillac founder Henry Leland, who was an ardent patriot and eager to assist in the US war effort.

Leland left GM and founded the Lincoln Motor Company, which received contracts to build Liberty aircraft engines.

Drawing on experience gleaned in the carriage-making business 20 years earlier, Durant assembled a collection of parts and components manufacturers (Hyatt Roller Bearing, New Departure Manufacturing, Dayton Engineering Laboratories (later Delco Electronics Corporation), Harrison Radiator Corporation, Remy Electric, Jaxon Steel Products, and Perlman Rim) into a new company; United Motors Company, making Alfred P. Sloan of Hyatt Roller Bearing Company the president.

Within two years, it had several marques (including the Durant, Star (also called Rugby), Flint, and Eagle),[9] rivalling the range offered by General Motors.

As he had with General Motors, Durant acquired a range of companies whose cars were aimed at different markets, and therefore, levels of affordability and luxury.

The lowest ('entry' tier) was the Star, aimed at the person who would otherwise buy the Ford Model T. Durant cars were mid-market, and the company's entire structure was purposefully very similar with GM; the Princeton line (designed, prototyped, and marketed but never produced) competed with Packard and Cadillac, the ultra-luxurious Locomobile being top of the line.

Durant was unable to duplicate his former success, and the financial woes of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression ultimately proved to be insurmountable, and the company failed in 1933.

Durant predicted that family-friendly entertainment venues would be big business in the coming years and he hoped to expand to a chain of 30 bowling alleys.

In 1942, Durant traveled to Goldfield, Nevada, to open up a cinnabar mine, hoping the US government would subsidize it through defense contracts, although this ultimately proved a pipe dream.

The 80 year old Durant made an exhausting climb on foot to the mine entrance to inspect it and after returning to Flint a few days later, he suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed.

Although Durant's mental faculties were unimpaired to the end and he attempted to work on his memoirs, complications from the stroke gradually robbed him of his ability to speak coherently.