David Dunbar Buick / Buick Motor Company
Posted by: 
Jagman714
N 42° 19.838 W 083° 02.351
17T E 331993 N 4688500
The David Dunbar Buick / Buick Motor Company marker is located on Jefferson Avenue next to GM World HQ Detroit, Mi.
Waymark Code: WM10JN
Location: Michigan, United States
Date Posted: 12/03/2006
Views: 86
David Dunbar Buick, for whom the Buick automobile is named, came to Detroit from Scotland, with his parents in 1856 at age two. A plumbing inventory and businessman, Buick turned to building gasoline engines for boats on the Detroit River during the 1890s. By 1900 his first motor firm, Buick Auto-Vim and Power Company, was operating some six blocks north of this site near what is now the southwest corner of Beaubien and Lafayette Streets. The firm's overhead valve engines became famous for power. The first experimental Buick automobile was built in Detroit circa 1900. On May 19, 1903, David Buick incorporated the Buick Motor Company. That fall the firm was sold to the Flint Wagon Works in Flint where the first retail Buicks were built in 1904.
Buick Motor Company:
David Dunbar Buick was one of many Detroiters who build gasoline powered marine and farm engines during the late nineteenth century. Buick (1854 ~ 1929) opened his first motor shop, Buick Auto-Vim and Power Company around 1900. Machinist Walter Marr built the first Buick automobile about the same time, and engineer Eugene Richard soon patented the powerful overhead valve engine synonymous with the Buick label. In 1903 the Flint Wagon Works purchased what was by then the Buick Motor Company and moved operations to Flint. Carriage maker William C. Durant took control of the company in 1904, propelling Buick to the top of the burgeoning market and using the capital to found General Motors in 1908. In 1998 ~~ nearly 35 million Buicks later ~~ Buick's headquarters returned to Detroit.
Visit Instructions:Take a photo of your GPS at the marker. We'd prefer a photo of you with your GPS, but we realize that sometimes that's just not possible or preferable.
Also include a bit about your visit to the marker.
NEW: Instructions for logging Missing Marker Visits.
If the Marker is missing, but still listed here, you must provide a photo of you at the actual item historically honored. (This should be the waymark's "default" image). Indicate in your log that you took your photo at the Historical Location instead of the marker, because the marker was missing. Please also still include a bit about your visit to the site.