The Tragic Founders of America’s Car Brands (Documentary)

In this video, we explore three men whose names are still on millions of American cars and who paid a heavy price for them: John and Horace Dodge, the hard-drinking Detroit brothers who died within a year of each other and left a fortune that tore their family apart; David Buick, whose company became the foundation of General Motors while he died almost broke; and Louis Chevrolet, who sold his stake in his own name and ended up working in a Chevrolet plant. ------------------- Gain FREE access to secret full-length documentaries on wealthy families "too scandalous for YouTube" by joining our newsletter: https://www.substack.com/@oldmoneyluxury ------------------- The story begins in Detroit with John and Horace Dodge. Around 1900 the brothers opened a machine shop and soon became essential suppliers to the new Ford Motor Company, taking a share of the business. In 1913 they ended their Ford contract to build cars of their own, and in 1919 Henry Ford bought back their Ford stock for 25 million dollars. They did not live to enjoy it. In January 1920, after the National Automobile Show in New York, both fell ill. Their doctor diagnosed influenza, though there was speculation about tainted bootleg liquor. John died on January 14, 1920, and Horace died that December. In 1925 their widows sold Dodge Brothers to the bankers Dillon Read for 146 million dollars, and the fortune that remained set off decades of disinheritance, lawsuits and family tragedy, including the death of John's youngest son, Daniel, thirteen days after his wedding. The second founder had already lost everything. David Dunbar Buick was born in Arbroath, Scotland, on September 17, 1854, and came to Detroit with his family at the age of two. His father died when he was six. He made his first fortune in plumbing, inventing a way to bond white enamel permanently to cast iron, a method still used for bathtubs today. Buick spent it on engines. In 1899 he set up the Buick Auto-Vim and Power Company, and in 1903, with a 5,000 dollar loan from his friend Benjamin Briscoe, he formed the Buick Motor Company. But he was a better engineer than businessman, and control soon passed to the Flint carriage maker William C. Durant, who used Buick to build General Motors. In 1906 David Buick left the company he had founded with a single share, which Durant bought for 100,000 dollars. He never found success again. He lost money on oil in California and land in Florida, tried to make carburetors with his son, and briefly ran Lorraine Motors. In 1928 the young journalist Bruce Catton found him working as an instructor at the Detroit School of Trades, unable to afford a telephone, let alone a car with his name on it. Buick told him he was not accusing anyone of cheating him. It was the breaks of the game, he said, that he had lost out on in the company he founded. He died on March 5, 1929, at the age of 74, and one newspaper reporter remarked that he had left only his name on a car. The man who drove Buick's race cars would suffer a similar fate. Louis Chevrolet was born on December 25, 1878, in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, grew up in Beaune, France, and emigrated to North America in 1900. He became a famous racing driver, winning for Fiat and then for Durant's Buick team. On November 3, 1911, he co-founded the Chevrolet Motor Car Company in Detroit with Durant, who had by then lost control of GM. The partnership did not last. Louis wanted to build fast, expensive cars, while Durant wanted a cheap car to compete with Ford. According to later family accounts, the break came when Durant told him to switch from cheap cigarettes to cigars, and Louis replied: I sold you my automobile, I sold you my name, but I shall not sell my personality to you. In 1915 he sold his shares to Durant, who soon used Chevrolet to win back control of General Motors. Louis and his brothers turned to racing cars instead. In 1920 his youngest brother, Gaston, won the Indianapolis 500 in a Frontenac, and later that year he was killed in a crash on the Beverly Hills board track. The Great Depression destroyed Louis's last business, and in the 1930s he went back to work as a mechanic in Chevrolet's Detroit factories. He died on June 6, 1941, nearly penniless, and was buried in Indianapolis. The central question is whether these founders were cheated out of their fortunes, or whether they made the choices that let other men grow rich from their names. This is the story of the Dodge brothers, David Buick and Louis Chevrolet, the men whose names built an industry, and the price each of them paid. #CarHistory #GeneralMotors #OldMoneyDocumentaries