GM's 50 Millionth Car Celebration Achievement USA 1955

more at http://quickfound.net/

'General Motors celebrates production of 50 millionth automobile with a parade through Flint, Michigan.' Produced by Sound Masters.

Originally a public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

General Motors Company, commonly referred to as General Motors (GM), is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Detroit that designs, manufactures, markets, and distributes vehicles and vehicle parts, and sells financial services, with global headquarters in Detroit's Renaissance Center. It was originally founded by William C. Durant on September 16, 1908 as a holding company. The company is the largest American automobile manufacturer, and one of the world's largest. As of 2019, General Motors is ranked #13 on the Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.

General Motors manufactures vehicles in 15 countries; its core automobile brands include Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac. It also either owns or holds a significant stake in foreign brands such as Holden, Wuling, Baojun, and Jiefang. Annual worldwide sales volume reached a milestone of 10 million vehicles in 2016...

William C. Durant's Durant-Dort Carriage Company, of Flint, Michigan, had become the leading manufacturer of horse-drawn vehicles in the United States by 1900. Durant was averse to automobiles, but fellow Flint businessman James H. Whiting, owner of Flint Wagon Works, sold him the Buick Motor Company in 1904. Durant formed the General Motors Company in 1908 as a holding company, with partner Charles Stewart Mott. GM's first acquisition was Buick, which Durant already owned, then Oldsmobile, on November 12, 1908. In 1909 Durant brought in Cadillac, Elmore, Oakland (predecessor of Pontiac), and the Reliance Motor Truck Company of Owosso, Michigan and the Rapid Motor Vehicle Company of Pontiac, Michigan (predecessors of GMC). Durant over-leveraged the fledgling company in making these acquisitions, and was removed by the board of directors in 1910 at the behest of the bankers who backed the loans to keep GM in business.

Durant re-entered the automotive industry the following year by co-founding the Chevrolet Motor Company with Swiss race car driver Louis Chevrolet (who left the company bearing his name in 1915). In 1916 GM was reincorporated in Detroit as General Motors Corporation. By 1917 the Chevrolet Motor Company had become successful enough that Durant, with the backing of McLaughlin and Pierre S. du Pont, reacquired a controlling interest in GM. Chevrolet Motor Company was consolidated into GM on May 2, 1918. Only two years later du Pont orchestrated the removal of Durant once again and replaced him with Alfred P. Sloan.

Sloan established annual styling changes making previous year's models to be "dated". He also implemented the pricing strategy that all car companies use today. The pricing strategy had Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac priced from least expensive to most, respectively.

General Motors grew in prominence surpassing Ford Motors selling just over 50% of car sales in 1962. With the prominence of the company, president of General Motors, Charlie Wilson said it best - “What’s good for General Motors is good for America”.

Their industrial dominance was displayed as they manufactured products other than cars and trucks such as Aircraft(North American Aviation), Construction equipment(Terex), Trains(Electro-Motive), appliances(Frigidaire)...