At 25, William Crapo Durant teamed with Dallas Dort to form the Durant-Dort Carriage Company, manufacturers of two-wheeled carts. In 1904 Durant bought out and reorganized Buick Motor Car Company. After a 1908 attempt to merge Buick, Maxwell-Briscoe, Ford, and Reo proved unsuccessful, Durant on Sept. 16, 1908, launched the General Motors Company. In the next two years, Durant bought in quick succession Cadillac, Olds, Oakland, Carter, Elmore, Ewing, Welch and several other lesser auto producers. Financial difficulties forced Durant out of General Motors in 1910, but by 1915, after his spectacular success with Chevrolet, “Fabulous Billy” was back to take over the corporation he had founded. Durant remained at the head of GM until 1920, when a depression saw the corporation’s stock tumble from $400 to $12 a share, despite his attempts to turn the tide. 1920 saw a management reorganization at General Motors leaving Durant on his own to start over again and start he did, participating in a series of enterprises ranging from Durant, Dort, and Star cars to Flint cars and finally Mason trucks. The 1929 depression, however, all but ended Durant’s financial undertakings, and he lived in comparative obscurity until his death.