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David Buick
Dear Classic Car Enthusiast,,
In this issue we share our mission: what we hope to accomplish and how you are part of it. We also introduce you to some of the exciting new features you’ll find on ClassicCar.com, and we bring you an exclusive article on the story of David Buick, as well as the first of our many future tech tips. We hope you enjoy the new –send us your feedback, we’d love to hear from you!
In this issue:
Our Mission & How You Are Part of It
Classiccar.com Classifieds: Bigger, Badder, Better Than Ever!
The Photo Gallery
The Bookstore
David Buick, an exclusive article for Classiccar.com Newsletter Subscribers
Enthusiasts, Hobbyists and Collector Story Submissions
New Products and Services on Classiccar.com
Tech Tip: The Thermostat
Attention Car Club Members
*A community you can come to on a daily basis to chat and interact with fellow enthusiasts.
*A portal where you can link to a wide variety of products, services and information from across the world wide web that are geared to meet your needs.
*An information source for the news you can use, from tech tips and value guides for those restoring classic vehicles to informative articles on the history, the people and places for the general car enthusiast.
*A showcase to celebrate in words and pictures all that is great about classic cars!
Down the road we plan to add more new features and services to make Classiccar.com an even more indispensable part of your life. To accomplish this we need your support. Here are three things you can do:
1) Support our advertisers. We’ve gone to great lengths to bring in reputable advertisers and sponsors that provide the very best products and services for classic car enthusiasts. If you have a need for any of the goods and services featured on Classiccar.com, please support us by supporting our advertisers. You’ll get great products and services, and in the end what goes around comes around, and through using our advertisers you’ll also be supporting our site, which will allow us to make the site even better for you!
Do you recognize the name? You should. David Buick founded the company that grew into the General Motors Corporation of America, one of the mightiest car-making empires in the world. Over 17,000,000 cars bearing his name and crest have rolled off production lines, yet he was involved in making only 120 of them.
His father, Alexander Buick, a joiner, immigrated to America with his wife and son when he was two years old. As a young man, David Buick settled in Detroit, where he started manufacturing plumbing materials. He made a tiny fortune after he invented a process for heat-binding porcelain to wrought iron to make white bath tubs — a much sought-after status symbol in those days.
Around the turn of the century, David saw his first motorcar. He became obsessed with cars and, in 1902; he organized Buick Manufacturing Company to make them. But his advanced designs invariably left the firm over-spent. He borrowed $5,000 from a friend, Ben Briscoe, who didn’t doubt David Buick’s ability as a craftsman but was wary of his business abilities. When Briscoe heard that a firm at Flint, 115 miles from Detroit, was thinking of starting car production, he persuaded Buick to team up with them. The firm was impressed with Buick’s car. They borrowed $10,000 from a local bank to settle the Buick debts. The Buick plant was shifted lock, stock and starting crank to Flint. But the deal left Buick with little say in the firm. In effect, he signed away his future. Still, the firm completed 16 cars in 1903 and 34 in 1904, all experimental machines at $1,200 each.
At this point, William C. Durant came onto the scene. A brilliant businessman, he’d already made a fortune in the carriage industry. On November 1, 1904, Durant became general manager of the Buick Motor Co. with Buick president.
Durant, who would later create General Motors, was a go-getter. Like Ford, he knew the industry’s future lay in speeding up production and cutting assembly costs. But Buick was a craftsman who regarded each car as a unique invention. One of the two had to go. It was David Buick. In 1906, aged 52, he severed his last link with the firm and returned to Detroit with his wife and son.
The company went from strength to strength. In 1908, Durant acquired Oldsmobile and Cadillac to form General Motors. Chevrolet joined in 1918. Britain’s Vauxhall was acquired in 1926, and Germany’s Opel some years later. Buick vehicle production reached 100,000 cars a year in 1923. Today, the Buick production facility is a 300-acre complex employing over 20,000 people and produces over 350,000 cars annually.
On March 5, 1929, David Buick died of colon cancer, impoverished and forgotten, in Harper Hospital, Detroit. Only a few weeks earlier, at the age of 74, Buick was still working as an inspector at Detroit’s trade school. His wife died some years later followed by his son Thomas in 1943.
Ben Briscoe sadly wrote in 1921 that had David Buick been able to keep his shares in the firm, they would have been worth more than $10,000,000 at that time. Their value today would be almost incalculable.
The house where David Buick was born in Arbroath, no longer stands. It was demolished years ago to make way for new council houses. But as the birthplace of a man who greatly influenced transport, its setting is appropriately close to the burgh’s new four-lane throughway, Burnside Drive. Arbroath could do little harm in renaming this roadway “Buick Way”, as a tribute to one of Scotland’s most remarkable forgotten sons.
OEM Factory Shop Manuals on CD-ROM now offers the hobbyist a great way to research repair tasks and print only the pages required to take out into the garage. Tried of thick, greasy manuals that don’t last? These are Original OEM Factory Manuals for your application. Check’em out, you won’t be disappointed. http://www.gearheadcafe.com/cgi-bin/store2/agora.cgi
Trying to find a part? Some models and some parts are just hard to locate. To help locate and find dependable source for hard-to-find parts, ClassicCar.com offers it readers Parts Locating Guides. These Locator Guides take the pain out of endless searching and wasting time pursuing bum leads. Each Locator Guide contains hundreds of up-to-date resources for the part you need. Looking for NOS stock? You will find it here at:
1) Conduct heat from the engine and carry it away, and warm it up to operating temperature so that the performance system can properly adjust the engine controls for optimum performance.
2) Provide hot water to generate heat from the heater core.
Don’t remove a thermostat thinking it will help the engine cool better, in fact the opposite effect will be the result. Removing the thermostat will allow cooling fluids to flow too fast through your cars radiator to allow for the transfer of engine heat, the result is over-heating.
When replacing your cars thermostat, it is important to use the correct temperature thermostat that was designed for your engine. Running a cooler thermostat can cause a host engine problems from spark plug fouling to fuel in your oiling systems. On newer cars, running a cool thermostat will cause poor computer control, which can lead to a rich fuel condition that can damage catalytic converters. Check your owner’s manual or your local parts supplier for the correct thermostat for your engine.
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