Alongside Ford, General Motors is one of the two greatest American car manufacturers and is closely tied to the birth, development, and fortunes of the car industry. Headquartered in Detroit, GM accounted for 17.1% of overall US car sales in 2020 – down significantly as a proportion from its heyday, but with strong annual growth, significant revenue contributions from its financial services arm, and a rapid expansion into the Chinese market, GM continues to shape the industry. Legally speaking, the current GM is a new company, formed in 2010 after the bankruptcy of the ‘old’ General Motors.

William C. Durant led the ‘old’ General Motors Company from 1908 when GM was formed out of the consolidation of various competing car brands. Comprising well-known names like Cadillac and Pontiac alongside many others, the company grew swiftly, overtaking Ford as the largest American car producer by 1929 and taking the world number one spot in 1931. From the early 1920s, the company made a spree of acquisitions abroad, including Vauxhall in the UK and Adam Opel in Germany. By 1941, 44% of all cars in the US were manufactured by GM, a position GM retained throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

Faced with increasing competition from abroad, particularly from Japan in the 1970s, GM diversified its production, acquiring data processing companies and satellite manufacturers. The early 1990s were a challenging time for the company and the American car industry in general, with plant closures, massive lay-offs, and the recognition that GM would need to produce more compact, cheaper cars to compete with imports. Despite a rebound in the late 1990s, this eventually led to the 2008 bail-out of the company by the US government. The company declared itself bankrupt in 2009, before beginning a remarkable resizing and recovery, which led to its second 2010 IPO and retaking the world number one position in 2011. Since then GM has seen its ranking among global manufacturers slip to sixth place, exiting its European operations, although GM remains highly profitable with over $122 billion in 2020 revenue.

GM’s 2010 IPO was the largest in US history at the time, trading up to $35 on the first day from an opening price of $33. The stock then largely traded sideways until beginning a rally in 2020, demonstrating renewed investor confidence in the firm. The US government sold the last of its GM shares in 2013, and now over 80% of GM stock is held by major institutional investors, most notably the pension fund Capital Management Group and Vanguard.