Tham khảo Assignment

General Motors Corporation (GM), world’s largest manufacturer of automobiles and one of the world’s largest manufacturers of trucks. GM sells about 30 percent of all cars and trucks in the United States and about 15 percent of all cars and trucks in the world. Based in Detroit, Michigan, GM is the largest corporation in the United States based on overall sales.

GM markets vehicles under the brands of Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Geo, GMC, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, and Saturn. GM owns German automaker Adam Opel and British automaker Vauxhall Motors. In addition, GM partially owns Saab Automobile AB of Sweden and Isuzu Motors of Japan. Other subsidiaries include Hughes Electronics Corporation, which manufactures telecommunications systems and automotive electronics, and General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC), one of the world’s largest providers of financial services, including automotive financing, insurance, and mortgages. GM also builds locomotives for railroads.

GM’s founder, William C. Durant, grew up in Flint, Michigan. In the late 1880s Durant and a business partner established a company to manufacture horse-drawn carriages with spring suspension. The company soon became the leading manufacturer of horse-drawn carriages in the United States, making Durant a millionaire. In 1904 Durant bought the financially ailing Buick Motor Car Company, which had been founded in 1903 by Scottish-born David Dunbar Buick. Although Durant lacked mechanical skills, he excelled in business administration and quickly turned the Buick company into the largest manufacturer of automobiles in the United States.

Durant believed that any car manufacturer producing only one model line was vulnerable to bankruptcy if sales faltered for even a single year. A large company that produced a variety of models, he reasoned, would be better protected from market forces. In 1908 Durant formed the General Motors Company in Flint and approached leading automakers with his idea for consolidation. Within two years, GM had acquired more than two dozen companies that manufactured automobiles or car parts. Buick and Olds Motor Vehicle Company, maker of the popular Oldsmobile, joined GM in late 1908. The first U.S. passenger car manufacturer, Olds had been founded in 1897 by Ransom Eli Olds of Lansing, Michigan. Two other major car manufacturers merged with GM in 1909: Oakland Motor Car (later renamed Pontiac) of Pontiac, Michigan, and the Cadillac Automobile Company, founded by Henry Leland in 1902 and named after the French explorer who founded Detroit, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac.

III.

CHANGES IN MANAGEMENT

Durant’s many purchases overextended GM financially. In 1910 bankers took control of the company and forced Durant out of GM. A year later, Durant established Chevrolet Motor Company in partnership with Swiss-born racecar driver Louis Chevrolet. The new company grew rapidly by producing inexpensive cars to compete with the popular Model T of the Ford Motor Company. Durant used the profits to buy GM stock, and by 1916 he had regained control of GM. That year the company reincorporated as General Motors Corporation. Also in 1916, GM acquired an important parts manufacturer, Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (Delco), whose founder, Charles F. Kettering, had invented the electrical ignition system for automobile engines. In 1918 Chevrolet formally became part of GM.

In 1920, with GM again facing financial problems, Durant was ousted a second time. Pierre S. du Pont, chairman of GM and president of chemical manufacturer E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, assumed GM’s presidency and reorganized the company. In 1923 Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., succeeded du Pont as president. Sloan, who remained president until 1937 and continued as chief executive officer until 1946, implemented a decentralized management structure and built GM into a global industrial empire. In 1927 GM vehicles outsold Ford vehicles for the first time.

IV.

LABOR PROBLEMS

Unrest among GM workers grew in the 1930s as the company sped up its assembly lines and ignored workers’ safety concerns. In December 1936 and January 1937 workers at GM plants in Flint halted assembly lines with sit-down strikes, in which the workers dropped their tools but remained inside the plants. GM responded by shutting off heat to the plants. When Flint police tried to force the strikers out with tear gas, the governor of Michigan deployed the National Guard to maintain order. Soon the sit-down strikes spread to GM plants in other cities, crippling the company’s production. In February 1937 GM granted worker demands and agreed to recognize the United Automobile Workers of America (UAW) as the collective bargaining agent for its employees.

V.

POSTWAR PERIOD

After the United States entered World War II in 1941, GM ceased civilian automobile production and manufactured tanks, airplanes, weapons, and other war supplies for the Allied forces. Following the war, GM introduced cars with innovative features such as automatic gearboxes, power-assisted steering and brakes, air conditioning systems, and safety belts. In 1953 Chevrolet introduced the Corvette sports car, the first mass-production car with a fiberglass body. GM’s sales soared until the late 1950s, when foreign cars gained in popularity.

In 1959 Chevrolet introduced the Corvair, GM’s first compact car. Sales of the car plummeted with the publication of Unsafe at Any Speed (1965), a book by American lawyer Ralph Nader. The book detailed how Corvair models produced until 1963 tended to lose control at higher speeds because of a faulty rear-suspension system. GM’s reputation suffered further damage when the public learned that the company had hired a private detective to follow Nader as part of an effort to discredit him. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration later declared the car as safe as other contemporary vehicles.

VI.

1970S AND 1980S

In 1973 and 1974 the embargo by Arab countries on oil exports to the United States badly hurt sales of American cars. Consumers, demanding fuel efficiency, shifted from large American “gas guzzlers” to smaller imported cars. In addition, GM, like other U.S. automakers, failed to respond to public concern over pollution from automobile exhaust until forced to do so by government regulation, particularly the 1970 amendments to the Clean Air Act. By 1977 the company had spent $4.5 billion to meet pollution-control standards.

GM’s share of the U.S. automobile market dropped steadily throughout the 1980s, from about 45 percent in 1981 to about 35 percent in 1989. GM laid off tens of thousands of employees throughout the decade and diversified by buying companies in other industries. Nevertheless, from 1990 to 1992 GM posted losses totaling almost $30 billion. In 1992, following a change in GM management, the company cut costs by closing plants, laying off tens of thousands more workers, lowering the profit margins of suppliers, and cutting back on fleet discounts and sales deals. GM returned to profitability in 1993.

VII.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

In 1996 GM sold the defense operations of Hughes Electronics to Raytheon Company in a deal valued at $9.5 billion. In 1997 the company merged its Delphi automotive components division with Hughes’s automotive electronics subsidiary, Delco Electronics Corporation. Also in 1996 GM introduced the EV1, an emission-free, two-seat electric car powered by rechargeable lead-acid batteries. Initially available only in parts of California and Arizona, the EV1 was the first mass-production electric car in the United States.

In 1998 nearly 200,000 members of the UAW engaged in a 54-day strike against GM. The strike forced the closure of nearly all North American production lines and cost the company $2.8 billion.

In 1999 GM spun off its automotive components division, Delphi Automotive Systems, as an independent corporation. The same year, GM purchased the rights to the Hummer brand from military vehicle maker AM General. In 2000 GM sold the satellite division of Hughes Electronics to The Boeing Company for $3.75 billion. The same year the company announced that it was phasing out its Oldsmobile Division over the next few years because the division was no longer profitable.

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