Short answers, pulled from the story.
William C. Durant founded General Motors as a holding company for Buick on the 16th of September 1908. Durant had run the Durant-Dort Carriage Company of Flint, Michigan, the largest maker of horse-drawn vehicles in the United States by 1900.
General Motors owns and manufactures four core automobile brands: Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac, each a separate division. It also holds interests in the Chinese brands Baojun and Wuling via SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile.
General Motors lost the title of largest automaker in the world to Toyota in 2008. GM had held the title for 77 consecutive years, beginning in 1931 when it overtook Ford Motor Company.
General Motors filed for a government-backed Chapter 11 reorganization on the 8th of June 2009 after receiving $17.4 billion in bailouts without a turnaround. The U.S. Treasury invested $49.5 billion through the Troubled Asset Relief Program and recovered $39 billion, a loss of $10.3 billion.
General Motors produced the EV1 for the 1996 model year, leasing it only through certain dealers in California and Arizona, then ceased production between 1999 and 2002 and declined to renew leases. All EV1s were returned to GM, and except for around 40 donated to museums with deactivated powertrains, all were destroyed.
Mary Barra was named chief executive officer of General Motors on the 15th of January 2014, succeeding Daniel Akerson. Three weeks into her tenure the company announced a recall over faulty ignition switches linked to at least 124 deaths.
General Motors engineers produced many firsts, including the first electric starter in America patented in 1911, leaded gasoline discovered by Thomas Midgley Jr. in 1921, and the Hydramatic automatic transmission introduced in 1939. GM also designed the Lunar Roving Vehicle that drove on the Moon in 1971 in partnership with Boeing.