50 Fun Facts About General Motors

Which Chevrolet, launched to take on the Mustang, plays Bumblebee in the 2007 film Transformers?

Camaro was a word found in an old French dictionary as slang for a pal, though Chevrolet managers told reporters it was a small, vicious animal that eats Mustangs.

Which 1984 comedy's heroes race to their calls in Ecto-1, a converted 1959 Cadillac ambulance?

Ghostbusters used a combined ambulance and hearse built by Miller-Meteor on a Cadillac chassis, and three different cars have played Ecto-1 across the films.

Which musician scored his first US top-ten hit in 1983 with the single Little Red Corvette?

Prince took the song to number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100, and after his death in 2016 it climbed back into the top 20.

Which refrigerator brand did General Motors own for sixty years before selling it in 1979?

Frigidaire was so dominant under GM that many Americans called any refrigerator a Frigidaire, whatever the make.

Which author of Unsafe at Any Speed won an apology from GM's president for having him tailed?

Ralph Nader's 1965 book opened with an attack on the rear-engined Chevrolet Corvair, and GM's James Roche apologized to him before a Senate subcommittee in 1966.

Which Japanese carmaker ended General Motors' 77-year run as the world's top-selling automaker?

Toyota took the title in 2008, ending a reign that General Motors had held every year since 1931.

Cadillac rose in 1902 from the remains of a company named after which carmaker, who had just quit?

Henry Ford walked out after a dispute with his investors, and engineer Henry Leland talked them into building cars in the idle factory instead of selling it off.

Which GM executive behind the GTO quit in 1973 to build the gull-winged car from Back to the Future?

John DeLorean was 40 when he became the youngest division chief in GM history, and the sports car that carried his name wore a body of stainless steel.

Which 1980s TV series starred David Hasselhoff alongside KITT, a talking black Firebird Trans Am?

Knight Rider's KITT, short for Knight Industries Two Thousand, was a modified 1982 Trans Am voiced by actor William Daniels.

Which singer had his 1955 Cadillac Fleetwood repainted pink and gave the car to his mother?

Elvis Presley gave the Cadillac to his mother Gladys even though she never had a driver's license, and it is still on display at Graceland.

Which American car brand, named after an Odawa chief, built the GTO, the Firebird and the Trans Am?

Pontiac began in 1926 as a cheaper companion to GM's Oakland line and sold so well that it had replaced its parent entirely by 1933.

Which car brand, founded in 1897, was America's oldest when General Motors closed it in 2004?

Oldsmobile's Curved Dash was the first mass-produced car, pushed by hand along an assembly line years before the Model T existed.

Which car brand, created in 1985 with its own Tennessee factory, sold at fixed no-haggle prices?

Saturn was GM's attempt to beat Japanese imports with a fresh start, right down to its own dealers, labor contract and engine, but the brand was closed in 2010.

Which SUV brand did GM buy from AM General, close in 2010 and later revive as an electric GMC truck?

Hummer began in 1992 as a civilian version of the Army's Humvee, and a deal to sell the brand to a heavy-machinery maker collapsed shortly before GM closed it.

Which Swedish carmaker, born of an aircraft builder, did GM wholly own from 2000 to 2010?

Saab was sold to the small Dutch sports-car maker Spyker in 2010 and had filed for bankruptcy within two years.

General Motors began in 1908 as a holding company for which carmaker, started by a plumbing inventor?

Buick was founded by David Dunbar Buick, a Scottish-born inventor who devised a way to bond enamel to cast iron that made white bathtubs cheaper.

Which full-size Chevrolet set an American record by selling more than a million cars in 1965 alone?

The Impala wore the leaping antelope as its logo, and its 1965 tally set an all-time American industry record for one year's sales.

Which nickname has stuck to the armored Cadillac limousines used by US presidents since 2001?

The Beast earned its nickname in the 2000s, while the Secret Service knows the presidential car by the code name Stagecoach.

Which nickname is given to the Chevrolet emblem, said to be based on a French hotel's wallpaper?

The bowtie first appeared on Chevrolet cars in 1914, and by one company account a traveling executive tore off a strip of the wallpaper to show his friends.

Cadillac takes its name from the French explorer who founded which American city in 1701?

Detroit was founded by Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, and the crest on the cars that carry his name is based on his coat of arms.

General Motors was founded in 1908 in which Michigan city, nicknamed Vehicle City?

Flint was a hub of carriage making before cars arrived, and GM kept its first headquarters there even though its papers were filed in New Jersey.

Which former carriage maker founded General Motors in 1908 and was twice forced out of the company?

William Durant was pushed out by bankers in 1910 and by shareholders in 1920, and he later ran a fast-food restaurant, working in the kitchen himself.

Which GM president of the 1920s introduced annual styling changes and a ladder of brands by price?

Alfred P. Sloan started out running a roller-bearing maker, and his steps from Chevrolet up to Cadillac were meant to keep buyers in the GM family for life.

Louis Chevrolet, the racing driver who co-founded the car brand in 1911, was born in which country?

Switzerland's watchmaking town of La Chaux-de-Fonds was his birthplace, and he sold his share of the company in 1915 after rows over the car's design.

Which form of US bankruptcy did General Motors file for in June 2009, emerging within six weeks?

Chapter 11 let GM sell its best assets to a new company backed by the US Treasury, in what was then the fourth-largest bankruptcy filing in American history.

Which engineer joined GM as an 18-year-old co-op student and became its chief executive in 2014?

Mary Barra was the first woman to run one of America's Big Three automakers, and she added the chairman's title two years later.

Which ex-railroad mechanic earned $10,000 a month running a GM division before quitting in 1919?

Walter Chrysler stayed in the car business after leaving GM, and in 1925 he turned the ailing Maxwell company into a firm bearing his own name.

Which GM styling chief pioneered clay models and built the Y-Job, the industry's first concept car?

Harley Earl, a coachbuilder by trade, used the Y-Job as his own daily driver once its show career was over.

Which Charles Kettering invention debuted on the 1912 Cadillac and soon spread to almost every car?

The self-starter replaced a hand crank that could kick back violently, and its inventor had earlier built the first electric cash register.

Which lightweight material, laid by hand, formed the body of the original 1953 Chevrolet Corvette?

Fiberglass bodywork became a Corvette trademark, and the car took its name from a small, maneuverable class of warship.

Which sea creature gave its name to the 1963 Chevrolet Corvette, famous for its split rear window?

The Stingray name arrived as two words, Sting Ray, on the first Corvette coupe, and the split rear window lasted for 1963 only.

A 2014 sinkhole swallowed eight cars at the National Corvette Museum in which Kentucky city?

Bowling Green has built every Corvette since 1981, and the sinkhole opened in the limestone beneath the museum's Skydome at about 5:44 in the morning.

Which Chevrolet, sold until 1987, joined a two-door car's cab to an open cargo bed in a single body?

The El Camino was built on car platforms such as the Chevelle's, yet American regulators classed it as a pickup.

A 1960s scheme set up by Chevrolet dealer Jim Rathmann put which group into new Corvettes every year?

Astronauts such as Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom raced their Corvettes along Florida beach roads while local police turned a blind eye.

Which Chevrolet, sold since 1935, became the first vehicle with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame?

The Suburban is the longest-produced nameplate in the car world, and its 2019 star honored appearances in more than 1,750 films and TV shows.

Which GM two-seater of the 1990s is the subject of the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?

The EV1 could only be leased, never bought, and when the program ended GM took the cars back and destroyed all but about 40 of them.

Which GM service, launched on 1997 Cadillacs, uses satellite positioning to send help after a crash?

OnStar began in 1996 as a joint project of GM, Electronic Data Systems and Hughes Electronics, and it reached the market in just 11 months.

Which 1977 road comedy, out-grossed that year only by Star Wars, made a star of the black Trans Am?

Smokey and the Bandit sent Trans Am sales almost doubling within two years, and its star Burt Reynolds was promised a new one every year.

Which GM crossover, once voted the ugliest car of all time, does Walter White drive in Breaking Bad?

The Aztek topped a 2008 Daily Telegraph poll of the 100 ugliest cars, yet it could be ordered with a camping package of tent and air mattress.

Which German carmaker, founded as a sewing-machine maker, belonged to GM from 1929 until 2017?

Opel moved from sewing machines to bicycles and then cars, and GM finally sold it to the French owner of Peugeot and Citroën after 16 straight years of losses.

Which General Motors ride at the 1939 New York World's Fair imagined the highways and cities of 1960?

Futurama carried visitors in moving seats over a model landscape designed by Norman Bel Geddes, and a survey of fairgoers rated it the most interesting exhibit by far.

GM bought Electronic Data Systems in the 1980s from which Texan, later a presidential candidate?

Ross Perot became GM's largest shareholder through the deal, but clashes with chairman Roger Smith led the company to buy out all his shares in 1986.

Which toxic metal did GM chemist Thomas Midgley add to gasoline in 1921 to stop engine knock?

Lead made Midgley ill enough to need a long rest in Miami in 1923, and he went on to develop Freon, another product later banned.

The first car tailfins, on the 1948 Cadillac, were inspired by which American World War II fighter?

The P-38 Lightning lent its look to a styling craze that reached its peak with the fins of the 1959 Cadillac.

Which car-rental brand did GM own from the 1920s until its namesake bought it back in 1953?

Hertz opened its first airport counter, at Chicago's Midway, and issued the first rental charge card while it belonged to GM.

Which machines did General Motors build through Electro-Motive, a company it bought in 1930?

Diesel locomotives from the division helped railroads retire steam, and in 1999 Union Pacific ordered 1,000 of one model, the largest such order in North American history.

Which architect of the Gateway Arch designed the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan?

Eero Saarinen made the campus his first solo design, and it was dedicated in 1956 with a speech sent by President Eisenhower.

Which GM gearbox of 1939 was the first mass-produced fully automatic transmission for passenger cars?

Hydra-Matic went to war soon after its debut, shifting gears in the M5 Stuart and M24 Chaffee light tanks.

Which Brussels-born engineer joined GM in 1953 and became known as the Father of the Corvette?

Zora Arkus-Duntov applied to Chevrolet after seeing the first Corvette at a New York show, and he also won his class twice at Le Mans in a Porsche.

For which NASA program did General Motors supply the wire-mesh wheels and motors of a crewed rover?

Apollo 15, 16 and 17 each carried a Lunar Roving Vehicle, built by Boeing with wheels, motors and suspension from a GM laboratory in Santa Barbara.