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I. General Motors History Highlights In its early years the automobile industry consisted of hundreds of firms, each producing a few models. William Durant, who bought and reorganized a failing Buick Motors in 1904, determined that if several automobile makers wo ....

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.... now emulated worldwide. The auto maker competed by offering models ranging from luxury to economy, colors besides black, and yearly style modifications. By 1927 it had become the industry leader. GM introduced a line of front-wheel-drive compacts in 1979. Under Roger Smith, CEO from 1981 to 1990, GM laid off thousands of workers as part of a massive companywide restructuring and cost cutting program. In 1984 GM formed NUMMI with Toyota as an experiment to see if Toyota's manufacturing techniques would work in the US. The joint venture's first car was the Chevy Nova. GM bought Ross Perot's Electronic Data Systems (1984) and Hughes Ai ....