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 One hundred and three years ago today, Dr. Herbert Mills of Flint, Michigan
bought the first Buick automobile ever sold commercially. Walter L. Marr, a
machinist for Buick Auto-Vim and Power, had purchased the first car to be called
a "Buick" several years before, in a private sale, when company president David
Dunbar Buick faced insolvency and sold most of his company's assets. The car in
the picture on the left – the first Buick ever manufactured in Flint – is from 1905, a year after David
Buick lost control of his company. Of these three cars, which one is the "the first Buick"?
An Inventor, Not a
Businessman
David Dunbar Buick was a gifted inventor, but his mastery of
machines never made him a rich man. The Buick Motor Car Company that he founded
in 1903 produced a powerful and efficient valve-in-head engine, but control of
his company soon passed to William Crapo Durant, owner of the country's largest
carriage maker. Whereas Durant was a skillful businessman who mass-produced
vehicles, Buick saw every automobile as a work of art. In 1906, a frustrated
Buick quit the company he had created and moved back to Detroit. Two years later, the Buick Motor Car
Company became the top producer of American-made automobiles, surpassing Ford
and Cadillac combined.
Never Call Retreat
During the last years of his life, David Dunbar Buick held a
series of low-paying jobs and couldn't afford a telephone, never mind one of
the cars that bore his name. Still, Buick was not bitter. A year before his
death from colon cancer in 1929, David Buick was interviewed by Bruce Catton, a
young newspaper reporter who later became a Pulitzer-prize winning historian.
According to Catton, Buick spoke of his life without regret and expressed no ill-will
towards William C. Durant.
We'll never know what went through David Buick's mind
on that day long ago, but maybe he kept his cool by remembering a hot day in July of
1904, when his first successful vehicle reached 30 mph on a trip around Flint, going so fast that
the driver "couldn't see the village six-mile-an-hour sign".
Was that car the first, real Buick?
Resources:
http://www.buickclub.org/Misc/history.htm
http://www.promotex.ca/articles/cawthon/2003/07-01-2003_article.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Dunbar_Buick
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