History of General Motors Departure (bearings); Delco Electronics and ACDelco (electrical and electronic components); GMAC (finance); General Aviation and North American Aviation (airplanes); GM Defense (military vehicles) and Electronic Data Systems (information technology). General Motors was capitalized by William C. Durant on September 16, 1908 as a holding company. The next day it purchased Buick Motor Company, and rapidly acquired more than twenty companies including Oldsmobile, Cadillac, Oakland, now known as Pontiac, and McLaughlin of Canada. Dr. Campbell, Durant's son-in-law, put 1,000,000 shares on the stock market in Chicago Buick (then controlled by Durant). Durant's earlier company, the Durant-Dort Carriage Company, had been in
General Motors Diesel General Motors Diesel General Motors Diesel was a railway diesel locomotive manufacturer located in London, Ontario, Canada. It served many notable companies such as BNSF Railway and Union Pacific. It was created in 1949 as the Canadian subsidiary of the Electro Motive Division of General Motors (EMD) located in the United States. In 1969 it was re-organized as the Diesel Division of General Motors of Canada, Ltd. The plant was re-purposed to include manufacture of other diesel-powered General Motors vehicles such as buses. Following the US-Canada Free Trade Agreement in 1989, all of EMD's locomotives were built at the London