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Happy 100th General Motors!

By Patricia Mroczek

The Flint celebration of General Motors 100th Anniversary in July was like a trip back in time—100 years of it.

Back was the time when Flint felt like a company town. Back were thousands of GM friends and neighbors who convened in the downtown to enjoy fancy car shows and concerts, historic home and garden tours, fireworks and more. And rolling back into Flint was a century’s worth of magnificent, locally-produced pieces of engineering and technology art. 

“This is so fantastic,” said Jim Morningstar of Brighton, who brought his 1923 Buick Depot Hack for the GM Centennial’s Parade of Vehicles. Morningstar’s classic car was originally built in Flint and was used as a taxi to tote guests to a North Carolina lodge. On Parade Sunday, the stunning Cantrell body glimmered in the sun as part of a world-class antique car exhibit on the red bricks of Saginaw Street. “She ran today,” Morningstar said proudly, “a great day all around.” 

Great, indeed. Flint’s GM Centennial from July 13-20 showcased “modern” automotive engineering, as defined by standards from 1908 through 2008. More than 250 GM vehicles were on display during the Centennial and re-proved the old adage that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, especially when it’s a shiny red and white Chevy Bel Air or a 1930s Marquette sedan.

“This was more than just a trip down memory lane,” said Flint GM Centennial Chair David White, who is the archivist at Kettering’s Scharchburg Archives. “Flint gave the automobile industry its start, so we put together the best line-up of events that we could think of to celebrate that heritage.”

Thousands of visitors attended car cruises, musical events and stepped where GM Founder William C. “Billy” Durant once did. Many of the participants at the car shows turned to a family member and said things like, “Hey, I worked on a car just like this!”

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