Nothing to Nothing

"Money is only loaned to a man," William Crapo Durant once said. "He comes into the world with nothing and he leaves with nothing."

"Billy" Durant came into the world in Boston with not even a loan. Raised in Flint, Mich., he quit school at 17. By selling patent medicine, cigars, insurance and borrowing from friends, he scraped up enough to join a fellow clerk in buying out a carriage factory for $2,000. Through his prodigious energy and salesmanship ("he could coax a bird out of a tree") the company acquired 14 plants by 1904. Durant's "Blue Ribbon" carriages became the Fords of a horse-drawn world.

The company overinvested in bicycles, lost out. Unperturbed, Durant got control of the tottering Flint Wagon Works, sold $10,000,000 worth of stock to exploit its rights to manufacture a horseless carriage, designed by David Buick. He made millions in a few years, laid grandiose plans to take over the lusty young auto industry. He almost did, by merging five companies--Henry Ford was the most important holdout--into General Motors.

In the panic of 1910 Durant lost control of G.M. Unfazed, he started manufacturing a car called the Chevrolet. Quietly he bought back 40% of G.M.'s stock (with the help of the Du Ponts) and walked into a G.M. board meeting with his pockets bulging with stock certificates. Imperiously he announced: "Gentlemen, I control this company." As Walter P. Chrysler later said: "It was like Napoleon's return from Elba."

In the post-World War I slump, G.M. stock slipped from $400 to $12. Durant spent an estimated $90,000,000 trying to bolster it before he finally lost control of G.M. for good. He founded Durant Motors, aiming to start a new G.M. But this time it was no go. He piled up another fortune by playing the stockmarket, but the 1929 crash virtually wiped him out. Later, he went into bankruptcy, listing $250 (the clothes on his back) as his only assets.

He still had his chipper spirits. But his Midas touch was gone. In 1936 he turned up in Asbury Park, N.J. as a lunchroom and supermarket owner. He plugged a dandruff cure on the side, operated a bowling alley in Flint. He still talked grandly of making a pile. But it was too late. Last week, in his eight-room apartment in Manhattan, Billy Durant, 85, died. Of the millions he had been "loaned" he left nothing.

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