The History Of Buick
Buick celebrated its centennial anniversary in 2003. The company was founded in 1903 in Detroit by David Dunbar Buick, a Scottish-born immigrant who moved to Detroit with his family in 1856. David Buick became an inventor and business owner in the 1880s, working in the plumbing field. He became very interested in gas engines in the 1890s and started building farm and boat engines by the late 1890s. In 1900, he opened a small company called Buick Auto-Vim and Power Company. One of several products offered by this company was automobile engines.
Between 1899 and 1903, David Buick and some colleagues created the overhead value engine and constructed two cars. The company changed names twice during this time, becoming Buick Manufacturing Company before being incorporated under the name of Buick Motor Company in May 1903, establishing the official date of the company’s birth.
The overhead valve engine, which later became known as the valve-in-head engine, was patented by Eugene Richards, an engineer at Buick. Even with the new technology in hand, Buick Motor Co. barely made ends meet during the first few months following incorporation. The turning point came when David Buick sold the company to another organization just outside of Flint, Michigan.
The company that purchased Buick was Flint Wagon Works, run by James H. Whiting. Whiting and company moved the entire Buick enterprise, including David Buick from Detroit to Flint by the end of 1903. By January of the following year, the Buick Motor Co. was producing engines from a one-story factory in Flint.
By mid-1904, Buick built its first car in Flint and following a successful test drive conducted by David Buick’s sons Marr and Thomas, the car was put into production. The car was called the Model B and throughout the summer of 1904, 37 of them were produced.
Running into financial constraints during the fall of 1904, James H. Whiting sough assistance from another carriage maker in Flint, William C. Durant. While Durant was not particularly a fan of automobiles and actually preferred carriages, he did appreciate the efficiency of the Buick Model B. He was impressed with the power and functionality of the vehicle and decided that he was up to the challenge of raising funds and promoting products for the Buick Motor Co.
In 1905, Durant attended the New York Auto Show and landed more than 1,000 orders for automobiles before the company had even managed to produce their first 40 cars. With the combination of David Buick’s ingenuity, Durant’s business savvy and sales focus, and Whiting’s backing, Buick Motor Co. was well staged to take the new world of the auto industry by storm.
Durant used his own sales staff and locations from the carriage business as the platform for displaying and selling Buick autos. He created a racing team that consistently won, placing the Buick name squarely at the center of the auto industry.
Between 1903 and 1908, Buick produced nearly 9,000 vehicles, with the Model 10 being the biggest seller among them, making up nearly half of the entire sales volume. By the 1920s, Buick was the car for the world’s elite, owned by political figures throughout the world.
While Buick suffered during the Great Depression, the company recovered prior to World War II. The first concept car was introduced in 1938, and the company’s automobiles saw great successes in the post-war period. While the concept car division declined in the 1940s, the division saw a resurgence of popularity in the 1950s due in large part to the quality of engines and inventive stylizing of the bodies of vehicles.
Buicks remained very popular throughout the 1960s, with the ’62 Special being named Motor Trend Car of the Year. Buick continued to produce cars with racing-quality engines, and also continued to run their own racing team during the 1970s and 80s.
In the 1990s, Buick established itself as the auto leader in supercharged engines. They continued to focus most of their efforts on sedans and mid-sized vehicles until 2002 when they introduce the first crossover vehicle to the market, the Buick Rendezvous. With this move, Buick fell into the same trap as all the big car companies. The focus of Buick on large premium vehicles is one of the reasons that the company found itself in financial distress in the recent recession.
While the future of Buick is sure to include luxury American automobiles, it must also include more eco-conscious and affordable cars as well. Buick will inevitably remain a leader in mid-sized sedans, as that has been the company’s strong suit for decades. Luxury need not be sacrificed in the production of better vehicles in the future, and Buick is sure to merge the affordable, ecologically and socially responsible vehicle with luxury and power.
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