Fisher Body Co.

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The Fisher Body Co. was a Detroit- based American wheelwright company . The company was a pioneer in body technology with the development of crank windows, backward-sloping windscreens and anti-reflective glass .

Company history

The company was founded on July 22, 1908 by Frederic J. Fisher (1878-1941) and his brother Charles J. Fisher (1880-1963) in Detroit. Albert Fisher, the uncle of the two, acted as sponsor. The first customers included Ford and Oldsmobile . In 1909 Albert Fisher wanted to leave the company because he did not agree with the business policy of his nephews. With the help of the Mendelssohn family he could be paid off; the Mendelssohns (two brothers and their sons) gradually joined the company as did the other five brothers of Frederic and Charles, Lawrence P. Fisher (1881-1961), William A. Fisher (1886-1969), Edward F. Fisher (1891-1972), Albert J. Fisher (1892-1962), and Howard A. Fisher (1902-1942). In 1909 a design department for open bodies was established.

In 1910 the Fisher Closed Body Co. was founded on the basis of orders for the new, closed bodies, for example from Cadillac . By 1914 Fisher already had ten offices in the United States and Canada , and that year they were producing 105,000 bodies. In 1916 the two companies were merged again, the headquarters were now in New York City . In 1919 Fisher began to consider building not just car bodies, but entire cars. At the same time, however, Ford, Studebaker and General Motors made takeover bids. GM finally got the chance and initially acquired 60 percent of the company's capital. In 1920, Fisher already produced 378,978 bodies. Four years later, Fisher had 44 plants with 40,000 employees producing 500,000 car bodies annually.

In 1925 Fisher bought Fleetwood Metal Body Co. in Fleetwood, Pennsylvania . A year later, GM bought the remaining 40 percent of Fisher's shares. The company's headquarters were now back in Detroit. From the beginning of the 1930s, Fisher, like Fleetwood, was only a GM division. The Fisher brothers became directors at GM. In 1934, Fisher built the first all-steel bodies. In the same year the founders Frederic and Charles Fisher left GM. You had always defended the wooden body as the optimum in automobile construction. In 1937 the last wooden structures at Fisher disappeared.

In the 1990s, several General Motors-owned component manufacturers, including Fisher, were merged to form Delphi Automotive . After the Renco Group bought the Delphi division for vehicle interiors and car locking systems , this part of the company, and thus also the main part of the former Fisher Body Co, was merged into Inteva Products .

Field of activity

Fisher Body Co. - and later GM's Fisher Division - pioneered body technology. Developments such as crank windows, backward sloping windscreens and anti-reflective glass can be traced back to their activities. The first GM airbags were also made at Fisher.

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