David Dunbar Buick

David Dunbar Buick

David Dunbar Buick (born September 17, 1854 in Arbroath , Angus , Scotland , † March 5, 1929 in Detroit , Michigan ) was an American engineer, inventor and industrialist.

Buick's family emigrated from Scotland to the United States in 1856 and settled in Detroit. David left school in 1869 and worked in a plumber . Together with a partner he was able to take over this in 1882. Some of his inventions, such as a lawn sprinkler or a process that can be used to combine enamel and cast iron , fall during this period . As a result, metallic surfaces in particular, which come into frequent contact with water, can be better protected against corrosion. Areas of application included pots, bowls and entire bathtubs. The company prospered. Buick, however, was more of a tinkerer and inventor than a businessman. When he became more and more involved with the internal combustion engine in the years after 1890 and devoted less and less time to the company, this led to tension between the partners and ultimately to the separation and sale of the company to the Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company .

Motors and the automobile

Buick now devoted its time and capital to engine development. In 1899 he founded the Buick Auto-Vim and Power Company to manufacture engines for agriculture and boats, but at the same time was engaged in the development of a complete automobile. Here, too, he concentrated too much on these tinkering and too little on the sales success of his products. In 1902 the company was renamed the Buick Manufacturing Company . There was now a single prototype , but at the same time it was foreseeable that Buick's capital was practically exhausted. He received support from engineers Walter Marr and Eugene Richard, who came from Oldsmobile . The three of them developed a new type of engine, the valves of which were no longer mounted on the side, but in the cylinder head. They called the principle "valve-in-head" , a forerunner of the modern, overhead motor . The industrialist Benjamin Briscoe stepped in as the investor with an amount of USD 5,000. It was also Briscoe who redesigned the company and registered it on May 19, 1903 as the Buick Motor Company under the laws of the state of Michigan.

General Motors

Briscoe was disillusioned with the fact that so far there was only one test vehicle and one manufacturing facility for his capital infusions - but no prospect of an early start of production. So Briscoe withdrew from the project (he founded the Maxwell-Briscoe Company , another successful automobile company , together with Jonathan D. Maxwell ), but brokered Buick in the late summer of 1903 with James H. Whiting (1842-1919), owner of the carriage- making company Flint Wagon Works , a new investor. After Flint , Michigan , and the production were laid. However, the Buick prototype didn't arrive there until the summer of 1904, and it wasn't until August that the first Buick automobile could be sold. Orders for 16 more vehicles followed in the next two months. But their production exceeded Whiting's financial resources. On November 1, 1904, he therefore formally handed the company over to William Crapo Durant , then co-owner of the Durant-Dort Carriage Company in Flint. Durant increased the company's capital from $ 75,000 to $ 150,000 in one year. He is said to have raised $ 50,000 from his neighbors in a single day. Shortly thereafter, the Buick Motor Company merged with Charles Stewart Mott's carriage construction company.

Durant and Mott founded the General Motors Company (GM) in Flint on September 16, 1908 as a holding for the Buick Motor Company. Mott was the largest single shareholder for a long time, but did not participate in the business. In the same year Oldsmobile came under the holding umbrella. David Dunbar Buick sold his stock at the end of the year and left the company he founded. Walter Marr became chief engineer.

Later years

David Dunbar Buick

Even later, David Buick did not show a happy hand in business: Together with his son Tom, he failed with a company that manufactures carburetors . In June 1921, he and a group of investors took over Lorraine Motors Corporation in Grand Rapids, Michigan . This company had only been founded the year before and had started producing a new automobile in the former factory of the Hackett Motor Car Company, which went bankrupt in 1919. Lorraine, too, had quickly got into trouble.

The car had a four-cylinder, 35 HP (26 hp) engine, purchased from Herschel-Spillman, a 114-inch (2896 mm) wheelbase, and was available with four bodies between USD 1,695 and USD 2,590. A smaller model at USD 1,200 with an engine developed by David Buick based on the valve-in-head principle that he helped to develop was only finished as a prototype before Lorraine had to give up after building just over 200 cars.

The next project also concerned the automotive industry. The David Dunbar Buick Corporation was founded in 1922 by David Buick together with some financially strong entrepreneurs. The company raised $ 5 million in capital. By the beginning of 1923, a prototype chassis of the planned mid-range passenger car with the name Dunbar had been built; three more were supposedly in the works. Suitable production rooms could only be found in April 1923. They were in Walden , New York , about 100 km outside of New York City . The start of production with four models in the range between USD 1,100 and USD 1,400 was scheduled for mid-May 1924. Eventually, a single car, a prototype, was made. The roadster had a wheelbase of 112 inches (2845 mm) and a six-cylinder engine with 52 HP (39 PS) purchased from Continental .

David Buick then tried unsuccessfully as an investor in California oil and real estate in Florida. Eventually, impoverished, he worked as a teacher and then at the information desk of the Detroit School of Trades. He developed colon cancer and died on March 3, 1929. Unlike Louis Chevrolet , David Buick had never received any kind of pension from General Motors.

He undoubtedly played a major role in the further development of the automobile into a sophisticated utility and sports car. The Buick company that bears his name still exists today. By 2000, around 35 million cars had his name.

source

• Kimes, Beverly Rae (editors) and Clark, Henry Austin, Jr.; "The Standard Catalog of American Cars", 2nd edition, Krause Publications, Iola WI 54990, USA (1985), ISBN 0-87341-111-0 , Pages 151, 152, 479, 637 and 864.