A Profile Overview of the General Motors Corporation

The General Motors Corporation is and Will always Will be the best overall when it comes to the quality and production of automobiles. From the day it began in 1908 it was the leading automobile production company in the United States. General Motors has accomplished many milestones in the history of the company such as the first car to reach one hundred miles an hour was made by General Motors. The name of the car was Vauxhall and it Was produced by GM.

General Motors also takes great pride in being a leading company when it comes to new products and innovations in safety and technology. General Motors thinks of their customer first which has kept them on top and Will continue to do so if money is spent carefully. The General Motors Corporation has become the World’s most powerful automaker along With a successful business by working hard and keeping the customer at the top of the list.

The General Motors Corporation was founded in 1908 by a gentleman by the name of William Durant.

Durant was special in the Way that he could build a horse-drawn carriage from the ground up. In the early 1900’s a neighbor watched as Durant built these carriages and offered to buy it once he had finished. Durant Was building that particular one for himself but promised to put his neighbor on a list and build him one next. His popularity grew and along with it so did his wealth. He became Wealthy enough that in 1908 he began his own company and named it General Motors.

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Instead of just making horse-drawn carriages he started With a simple motor similar to that of Ford’s creation along With a couple of separate options to go along With it. The main option was the original electric headlamps. The General Motors Corporation was formally chartered in the city of Hudson, New Jersey in the year 1908.

In the years to follow General Motors came outwith many innovations and set standards that no other company could keep up With. In 1910. General Motors was the first company to offer closed bodies as standard equipment. The very next year they introduced the electric starter, which was invented by Charles F. Kettering In 1912. General Motors adopted the first all steel body in automobile history In 1920. General Motors completed their building and a few years later opened the first automotive proving ground test facility. ln 1926. they developed the first shatterr resistant safety glass and also came out With the first comprehensive serVice policy. Five years later the branch of Cadillac came out with the first V716 Phaeton engine Which was the highlight of the classic car era. In 1933. General Motors developed independent front wheel suspension and the built in trunk.

The IoIIoWing year they conducted the first rollover and barrier impact tests by a car company. In 1938. GM built their first experimental vehicle called the Buick V – Job and set the industry standard by coming out With the first column-mounted gearshift. Two years later in 1940 General Motors reached their largest milestone yet by producing its 25,000,000 car on January 11. From 1940 to 1945 General Motors supported the war by producing materials such as airplane engines. airplanes and parts, trucks. tanks. marine diesels. guns. and shells. In 1950. General Motors introduced the first American produced vehicle with a sports car motif; the Chevrolet Corvette Three years later the Corvette becomes the first GM Vehicle to evolve un- changed from a Motorama show car to production. In 1955 General Motors established the world’s first safety test laboratory at the General Motors proving grounds and conducted atmospheric research and shares its findings with government and industry 1958 marks General Motors’ fiftyth anniversary. In 1964 General Motors came out With the Pontiac GTO which was the start of the compact high-performance muscle car era.

In 1978 General Motors forms the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation in September to recognize ihdivrdual excellence in cancer research. They also become the first to offer air bags in production vehicles in this year. In 1981. General Motors opened its European assembly plant in Zaragoza. Spain. the largest overseas expansion project ever undertaken by GM. In 1987 and 1988 GM won the inaugural World Solar Challenge Race and Won the Motor Trend’s “Car of the Year” awards. Over the next few years General Motors came with two inventions that drastically effected the safety of the automobile The first was the invention of the anti-lock braking system and the second was a crash test dummy that made it possible to measure the damages sustained to a human in certain types of crashes, In 1993. General Motors made another huge step in making a car safer by coming outwith the pregnant crash test dummy. The next year General Motors recorded their one billionth test mile driven at the Milford Provtng Grounds.

In 1996. General Motors established the Concept:Cure program for the fight against breast cancer and pledged more money to the nationwide United Way campaign than any other United States corporation at $37 million, In 1997. General Motors set a record by introducing fourteen new models which was the most introductions for any one model year in General Motors’ history. They set the offrcral industry standard With its Hybrid III crash test dummy. These accomplishments show that General Motors is not only concerned With making cars but they are also concerned with the well being of everyone. They have started more health orientated programs and donated more money than any other automobile corporation ever in the United States General Motors has proved to be concerned with more than just cars and their profits General Motors is one of the richest automobile manufacturers in the world and their profits from the past prove it.

General Motors is one of the pillars that hold up America’s economy, The company employs 647,000 people and is partnered with over 30,000 supplier companies world Wide. It is a global presence that is recognized in over 190 countries. Due to this the company makes a record amount of money every year. In the fourth quarter of 1997 the company made an astonishing $1.7 billion dollars. General Motors made $6.7 billion in the course of 1997 which is the most ever for them and made earnings of $8.70 per share for holders. Despite being one of the richest corporations General Motors is still having to close down plants located all over. One of the most recent plants that they closed down in Oshawa. Canada. had employed over thirty five hundred people and was one of only three that worked throught the strike. Three out of twenty»nine factories had worked through the strike Currently General Motors is trying to centralize their vast sales. service. and marketing system for the six main car divisions which will save them around $300 million dollars a year.

Despite closing plants and trying to save money they are also trying to design a plant where all the parts of a car Will go in and a complete car Will leave using only a handful of workers. If this is completed it will severely effect the prices of cars and the cost to make one. General Motors stock is used to owning around 35 to 40% of the car market so when it dropped to around 28.6% General Motors knew that they had to do something to compensate. They tried to drop prices and went as low as sixty-nine dollars a month to lease a brand new compact truck which was the cheapest ever by General Motors, General Motors also tried to save some money by cutting the amount of money that they spend on IT. Normally they spend about 2.7% its revenues or about $4.5 billion a year. Last year they cut that four hundred million dollars which is about half of their goal of eight hundred million dollars a year.

Although General Motors is struggling now they still are a light year ahead of their nearest competition. General Motors estimates that you make about $7.93 per share for them while you only make $490 on a share of Ford. A share of Ford stock runs about fortyreight dollars while General Motors’ stock runs about ninety-seven dollars per share. Another way General Motors saves money is by keeping their workers occupied in the factories, The workers work in twelve to twenty member teams and switch stations every thirty minutes which keep them fresh and interested. General Motors still has the occasional lawsuit though. The most recent being one from a man named Buddy Smith who sued for a private amount after taking his brand new van and haying it break down three times in the first 5000 miles. Smith also added fraud to the suit when he found out that the van had been serviced for the radiator and motor before he had bought it.

Another project that may put a dent inGeneral Motors profits is the renovation of their tech center that was built in 1950, The tech center consists of twenty-five buildings and employs around 25,000 workers. All of the eighty-eight labs are to be renovated and it is going to cost about $1 billion dollars. The tech center occupies 330 acres and surrounds a twenty-two-acre lake. General Motors currently has more new products. innovations, and vehicles on the verge of coming out than ever before. Their pride and joy is the brand new 3.5 liter V76 motor. They are planning for this to take the place of the old 3.8 liter motor that for years was considered the best motor that General Motors built. The new motor is already in the 1999 Oldsmobile Intrigue The new motor evolved from the Northstar system and concentrates on the dual overhead valve design. The motor is pretty much Just a smaller versron of the 4.6 liter motor that is in Cadillacs.

With the new design the motor puts out an impressive 215 horsepower and around 230 footjpound of torque which IS the most by a V-6 that is not turbo or super-charged. The super-charged version of the 3.8 liter motor has more horsepower at 240 and more feethound of torque at 280 and the main thing is that it is cheaper than the new motor. General Motors still feels that their new motor will be the bread and butter of the V-G engines available. General Motors has also been busy coming out With new safety products that will make their cars even safer. One of the new products is their child seat anchor which involve built-in tethers that hold the baby seat in the correct position in an accident. Another product is the invention of their Hybrid lll crash test dummy which is made to reach the identical way a human would react. The dummy will break the same bones and rip the same tendons while recording all the information and sending it to General Motors‘ technitions Waiting in a nearby office.

A new vehicle they are producing is what they are calling a network vehicle. This vehicle Will have built in satellite positioning, the internet, and numerous on-board computers. You’ll be able to check your stocks and send an e- mail all while drivrng to work. This vehicle is produced by General Motors, IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Netscape, and is expected to be out With in a couple of years. Another new products that has all drivers excited is the idea of automated highways. The idea is that you can drive without touching the steering wheel. gas pedal, or brake pedal. Tiny magnets in the road guide you along and tell the car about and changes in the road conditions. General Motors newest redesign is their new Silverado and Sierra. General Motors is already lower than they have ever been so this is a launch that they can‘t afford to blow. The all-new lull-size truck cost General Motors over $3 billion in development and design.

The new Silverado is also the first vehicle that General Motors used their new $103 million dollar validation center on every truck. Besides changing the outside to make it look more modern they also changed the interior to make it the roomiest truck on the market and also changed the motors from a 4.3 liter V-6 or a 5.7 liter V—B to the same V—G or the choice of two different V-E’s, 5.3 and 5.9 liter motors, By spending all this money on the new truck they plan to make it all back and then some. General Motors is planning to make $14 billion dollars in sales on the new truck in the next twelve months alone. General Motors has also been working extremely hard on the fuel-cell vehicles. It was originally planned that General Motors would come out With a prototype in the year 2020 but now the prototype will be ready by the year 2005. The fuel-cell vehicles most intriguing aspect is the fact that they get nearly eighty miles to the gallon which is triple most cars of today.