General Motors (GM) was formed by Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Chevrolet and Cadillac in the 1910s and became the world's number 1 car maker since 1927.

The giant car maker reached its peak in the 50s, when it accounted for 20% of the GDP of United States ! Since the first oil crisis in the late 60s, it has been declining gradually. Domestic market share is being eaten up by the Japanese. Cadillac, once the world's standard for luxury and technology, is beaten by European and Japanese premium brands.

GM was the inventor of "badge engineering" and "platform sharing". Cars from its 5 brands share the same platform, relying on different clothes and options to differentiate them. Unfortunately, GM failed to transfer the cost savings to improve its cars, failing to attract new generation of customers. The shrinking customer base led to more internal competitions among the 5 brands and eventually the death of Oldsmobile. The fact is, today GM can no longer support so many brands. More have to go in the future. This could include Saturn, a division established in the late 80s to strike back the Japanese but with little success.

GM is an international enterprise. Its overseas subsidiaries include Europe's Opel / Vauxhall and Saab, Japan's Suzuki and Australia's Holden. Most of them did not perform well and gave the parent company a lot of headache. GM has yet to find ways to integrate its subsidiaries healthily into its empire.

The oldest member of GM is Oldsmobile. It was founded by Ransom Eli Olds in 1897 and was one of the oldest car makers still surviving today. It had the most advanced "mass production" system before the Ford era - starting from 1901, its production reached up to 6,500 cars annually.
However, the GM story started with another brand, Buick. David Buick established it in 1899 and went into financial trouble in 1903. Carriage maker Billy Durant took over it then and started absorbing other car makers. This brilliant businessman has no engineering background, but his financial know-how helped him to win battles after battles. He saw there were too many car makers rose and fell in America. He believed a consortium of several car makers would provide a stable finance without being risked by the poor performance of individual models. He also pioneered the concept of component sharing among the brands which reduce the price of parts and cost of engineering.

Therefore Durant acquired the Oldsmobile in 1909 and created General Motors. Then the targets went to Oakland Motor (1909) which was then renamed to Pontiac after a popular model. The largest purchase was the famous Cadillac (also 1909). At last finished the shopping by taking over Chevrolet in 1916. By 1920, GM had grown 8 times compare with four years ago. Durant lost his post during the post-WWI recession.

The famous GM building was completed in Detroit in 1920 as a symbol for American industry. Since then the research and development of cars were centralised, with a budget and facilities that made the rest of the world jealous. GM became a world leader for mass production technology, such as the mass production six-cylinder engine, high compression V8, automatic transmission, air conditioning, electric windows, safety glass, fast-drying paint etc. By 1927, GM surpassed Ford to be the world's largest car maker, thanks to its variety of model ranges, in contrast to the one-car policy of Ford.

Since the 20's, GM adopted a clear pricing policy - each divisions and each models were assigned with a price range and target customers to avoid internal competition. On the other hand, GM started a so-called "revolution" in car styling. It employed the industry's first stylist, Harley Earl, to help diversify the image of its wide model ranges. He shaped cars according to taste and fashion instead of functions, created the idea of "model year" by facelifting cars every year. Like the fashion wear, this increased the public interest to change cars frequently, hence increased sales. The situation went too exaggerate to the extent that the cars in the 50's had ultra-long trunk and tailfins inspired by aircraft fighters. During the "good old days", the wealthy American public could afford it, thus pushed General Motors to its peak.

After the peak, GM started a trend of "muscle car" with Pontiac GTO. That pushed the American market to another extreme - everyone pursued for big block V8s with up to 7 litres capacity and 400 horsepowers. In response to Ford's popular pony car, Mustang, Chevy Camaro and Ponitac Firebird was born with nearly equal success. All American car makers succeeded to achieve fire-breathing performance in a low price with big but old-tech V8 produced in mass amount. The cars also grew too irreasonably big ("size does matter", as they said) and thirsty to be exported. Handling were ruined by the size and weight as well as the lack of concern in suspension and chassis design. The whole American motor industry was set on fire and seemed to crazy in the eyes of European.

The first energy crisis in 1967 punished GM (also Ford and Chrysler) heavily. But it did not learned from the lesson as the crisis disappeared quickly. However, the second oil crisis in ‘ 73 and then the third occasion in '78 were not so kind, accompany with emission regulations. The big 3 found their ignorance about small economy cars paid the price. Sales of Japanese imports surged. Chevrolet made its first so-called "compact car", Corvair, but not too "compact" by our standards. GM was in loss times to times during the 70's and 80's. In 1989, it recorded the biggest loss ever experienced by the world's industry. Substantial cost-cutting afterwards helped it to regain profitability, but market share is declining as a result.

Since the Mustang era, GM has been known as a bulky giant without much new ideas explored. It talked too much about reform but did too little, with the exception of Saturn. Saturn was a clean-sheet new division with its own R&D. It learned development and production methods from the Japanese and started production in a new factory in Tennessee, in 1990. However, the result was not very successful. Market share is still being eaten by the Japanese.

In the 90s, GM made some big scale acquisition. It bought Saab in 1990, Subaru in 1999 (which it sold off 6 years later) and Daewoo in 2003. But the most spectacular of all was the merge with another giant, Fiat, in 2000. However, the marriage lasted only 5 years. As the financial crisis of its Italian partner deepened, GM pulled out in early 2005.