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
History of General Motors not conceive of such a situation "because for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa". Later this statement was often misquoted, suggesting that Wilson had said simply, "What's good for General Motors is good for the country." At the time, GM was one of the largest employers in the world – only Soviet state industries employed more people. In 1955, General Motors became the first American corporation to pay taxes of over $1 billion. By 1958, the divisional distinctions within GM began to blur with the availability of high-performance engines