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Editor’s note: David Krumboltz’s regular column is on hiatus until further notice due to the ongoing COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. In its place, we’re running some of Dave’s favorite past columns. This one originally ran in November 2016.
When I saw this issue’s 1929 Durant at the Blackhawk Museum’s Cars and Coffee Car Show, I wanted to hear the story and learn the history. It wasn’t the prettiest car there or the best restored, but it was certainly one of the most unusual. I found the owner, Jim Mitchell, of Walnut Creek, who had owned it about a year. He discovered the car when he was doing volunteer work picking up old furniture for a charity.
“When the garage door was opened to get the furniture, here was this Durant and a 1919 Ford Speedster. Both cars had been in the garage about 20 years,” Mitchell said of the cars that had belonged to the donor’s father. “The last time the Durant was registered was 1987, so it hadn’t been run for about 28 years. It was sitting on four flat tires, but it was in pretty decent shape.”
The story of the Durant car starts long before this 1929 model was built. Most of us love “rags-to-riches” stories, but it was just the opposite for William C. Durant. He was an owner of the Durant-Dort Carriage Company, a leading manufacturer of horse-drawn carriages. In 1904 he teamed up with the Buick Co. and tried to put together the four leading auto manufacturers of the day into one company, but Henry Ford wanted cash, not stock, for his company, so that ended that plan.
In September 1908 Durant incorporated General Motors of New Jersey with a capital investment of $2,000 (about $50,000 in today’s dollars). Within weeks stock in the company was sold, raising more than $12 million (about $284 million today), and General Motors was born. Durant was a wheeler-dealer and soon bought control or interest in about 30 auto companies, stretching the company’s financial strength. This made the board of directors and bankers very nervous, and they forced Durant out of GM in 1910.
Not discouraged, Durant then became a partner with Louis Chevrolet and regained control of GM in 1915. He was the president of GM until he was shown the exit door again in 1920. Durant Motors was formed the following year and lasted until 1933, a victim of the Great Depression.
Back in present times, Mitchell didn’t buy this Durant car on the spot, but like a puppy at a dog shelter, this car seemed to be begging to be adopted. He corresponded with the woman who owned it and her daughter and eventually bought the Durant for $7,000.
“I didn’t know what they were worth, but I got on the Internet and found there was a Durant club. I talked to the president of the club, who said if it is in good condition it is worth maybe $10,000.”
Once purchased, Mitchell discovered that while the car is a two-door coupe, the hardtop is gone.
“Somebody had put a soft top on it, not a retractable one.”
The attractive top is white vinyl and appears to have been done professionally. It looks fine but distracts from the car being original, and there are no side windows. The odometer showed 81,822 miles when Mitchell bought it and he has only driven it a few hundred miles so far.
“I assume the motor has been rebuilt a few times,” he said. “It’s a straight-six Continental motor rated at 49 HP, as Durant didn’t build motors, they just built the carriages. It has a three-speed manual floor transmission that is not synchronized, so the driver would have to double-clutch when down-shifting. When up-shifting up you have to kind of slide it in to gear. It’s not good for speed shifting. It has four-wheel mechanical brakes, which are nice because I didn’t have to deal with any leaky brake fluid. But it doesn’t stop on a dime. It stops more on a dollar.”
The color of the car is a light blue, including the fenders and running board. The owner states that it’s definitely not an original color, as most cars in that area had black fenders and running boards, with the hood and body a contrasting color. The car sits on 19-inch wheels with wooden spokes and was probably a midpriced vehicle competing with Buick and Oldsmobile. The framing of the car, everything behind the sheet metal, is wood. Even the steering wheel is wood.
At least some of the Durant vehicles were built in Oakland on International Boulevard at Durant Street, at what many of us know as the old Chevrolet Truck Plant or Parts Warehouse. Proudly above the door of what would have been the main office is the Durant name engraved in stone. Now called the Durant Marketplace, there is even a red four-door 1929 Durant on display.
As for William C. Durant, his was a “riches-to-rags” story. He died in 1947, nearly broke, with his last job as the manager of a bowling alley in Flint, Michigan.
Have an interesting vehicle? Contact David Krumboltz at MOBopoly@yahoo.com. To view more photos of this and other issues’ vehicles or to read more of Dave’s columns, visit mercurynews.com/author/david-krumboltz.
