The Fast Times of Albert Champion

by Peter Joffre Nye

The two men had spent most of the day together, discussing autos, Durant talking in his rapid, easy way.116 They were so nearly the same size—a tad under five feet eight inches and 140 pounds.117 Anyone seeing them together might easily have mistaken them for brothers. They also shared the same dream in the future of autos.

  Buick represented the biggest opportunity of Champion’s career. Durant’s serene confidence and proven success would have likely reminded Champion of his former Paris boss Adolphe Clément-Bayard—the locksmith who had started a small enterprise and developed it into one of the continent’s great auto companies. Champion had no hesitation about leaving his partners for a fresh start in Michigan, the heartland of auto commerce. He could persuade Elise, Prosper, Schmidt, and fellow countrymen to follow him and leave the Stranahans behind.

  Durant inquired about how much money Champion had in the business and if he had any partners. Champion replied that Frank Stranahan owned a majority of the company stock.118 He said he would talk with Stranahan about buying him out.

  To clinch the deal, Durant would have informed Champion that he intended to buy other car and accessory companies, although without disclosing details. He promised to put up the money to move Champion’s outfit to Flint and to set him up in a factory where he could create the spark plugs for Buick’s engine.119

  The Man freighted the offer with three caveats.120 First, Champion would have to make a spark plug that passed the strict test imposed by Buick engineers. Second, he had to produce the merchandise for less than the thirty-five-cent Rajahs. Third, he had one year to pay for Durant’s cost of buying out his share and the moving expenses. Champion’s revenue would come from savings generated by producing spark plugs at a lower cost than the price of Rajahs. Over the one-year trial, Champion and his cohorts would earn little more than basic living and operating expenses. If Champion fulfilled all conditions, Durant assured him a generous share of the business.121

  They left the discussion there. Durant went back to his dealership.

  Two mornings later, Champion found Durant at his office.122 He reported that Stranahan had agreed to buy his share but would not sell Champion’s name. Durant recounted: “I told him I was not interested in the name—I was interested in spark plugs. But he said, ‘I am very much interested in the name. That is my name.’ Strange as it may seem, I then asked the question, ‘What is your full name?’ Shrugging his shoulders—in real French style—he replied, ‘Albert Cham-Pion.’ I then said, ‘We will have little use for a name unless you make good, but it would seem to me a company bearing your initials—“A.C.”—would answer every purpose.’ That suggestion pleased him, and the matter of the name was disposed of.”123

  Durant wrote a check to Stranahan for $2,000.124 The next day, Champion returned with a bill of sale.125 The Albert Champion Company, a little more than three years old, for all practical purposes had ceased.

  “As soon as I could arrange it, I took Albert Champion to Flint, found a building near my office, and put him to work,” Durant wrote.126

  Albert, Elise, and their dozen compatriots climbed down from the train to stretch their legs and unload their possessions in Flint on September 10, 1908.127 Flint was a runt of a burg, surrounded by rural farmland and forests. It could have fit in Boston or Paris as a small neighborhood. Flint was still a Saturday-night-horse-and-buggy town. Farmers came on wagons groaning under towering haystacks and tied their horses to the hitching posts and rails lining Saginaw Street. The wagons protruded deep into the street and created traffic hazards—streetcars sliding over rails barely squeezed past.128

  It was a doughty town, the seat for the greater Genesee County, and expanding like an accordion—doubling in the last five years, from less than fourteen thousand inhabitants129 to about twenty-five thousand.130 Two railroads, the Grand Trunk and Pere Marquette, served Flint. The tracks crossed the flat plain along trails that had been cut by the French explorers and trappers who had made their way up the Flint River.

  The Man set up Champion’s operation in a corner of the Buick factory on the town’s west side. Once again Champion was gambling but, as always, his confidence remained bulletproof as he entrusted his future to Durant and the Buick Motor Company.

  Everything came down to creating a spark plug at least equal to the Rajah and cheaper. From early in the morning into the evening, Champion and his associates studied the Buick’s valve-in-head engine. They examined the Rajah’s construction compared with the spark plug Champion had been producing. He collaborated with Albert Schmidt to create a prototype. All of their careers depended on crafting an original device and producing it in mass quantities at less expense. After five weeks of dogged experiments and adjustments, he submitted his new device to Buick engineers. They subjected it to a strict test. Champion’s spark plug performed without flaw. The engineers praised its genuine merit.131 Champion directed his men to make a few hundred spark plugs a day.132

  He was back on track with a whole new enterprise. For more than a year he had been emphasizing his company’s Champion ignition products in ads. In Flint he decided to keep that name. On October 23, he incorporated the Champion Ignition Company of Flint in the state of Michigan with two business partners on capital of $60,000.133

  Creating his new product had involved trying—and discarding—an array of materials, which led to an original discovery. Champion devised an invention to replace silver and copper conductors of electric currents with porcelain conductors to improve distribution of electricity flowing from the magneto to the spark plug.134 His invention provided a compact, inexpensive, and effective holder for high-voltage currents. A patent lawyer conducted research to ensure that Champion had established a technical improvement before writing the patent application. A draftsman drew diagrams showing how the parts functioned. On November 3, 1908, Champion filed his invention for the insulator and conductor with the US Patent Office in Washington, DC.

  Durant left Champion alone and rocketed all around the country on trains to bolster the Buick sales force and build up a supply chain to fulfill his greater idea. Part of the plan he had withheld from Champion was to make Buick the cornerstone of his grand new organization, which would compete with Henry Ford’s low-cost car for the masses, the Model T, introduced that year.

  Billy Durant lined up the purchase of Oldsmobile, the oldest brand on the market.135 Before buying Oldsmobile, however, he founded a holding company that would allow him to create his new scheme. The articles of incorporation were filed on September 16 in Trenton, New Jersey, on capital stock of $2,000 ($52,200 in 2014) for the General Motors Company of New Jersey to build automobiles.136 The officers in the company papers listed businessmen unknown to the Garden State press. As he had intended, the filing escaped public notice, even back in Flint, where the press tried to follow The Man’s every movement.

  Free from scrutiny, Durant operated boldly. Days after General Motors was formed he boosted its capitalization to $12.5 million ($322 million in 2014).137 His control of both Buick and General Motors allowed him in six weeks to orchestrate General Motors’ purchase of Buick for about $3.75 million138 ($96.5 million) and Oldsmobile for a little more than $3 million139 ($77.2 million).

  The Common Council of Flint, the Vehicle City, finally decided to modernize the city’s image by getting rid of the hitching posts and rails on Saginaw Street. “Roosting irons for loafers,”140 complained an alderman in favor of traffic safety. Merchants protested that without a way to hitch horses, farmers would never again visit Flint and businesses would lose money. The council sided with traffic safety and issued an order to remove them one quiet weekday night in October.141 Despite the cries of economic ruin, business went on as usual.

  Buick paid Champion’s company twenty-five cents for each spark plug, ten cents less than the Rajah.142 Orders doubled.143 Buick was now buying a thousand plugs a day,144 saving Buick $100 a day.145

  A year after Champion moved to Flint, The Man was back in his office to pore over the Champion
Ignition Company balance sheet, which reported a net cash balance of $136,000.146 His investment in Champion’s company and operating expenses up to that time amounted to approximately $36,000.

  “Champion had paid back the initial investment and had over $100,000 in the bank,” Durant wrote. “I sent for Champion, told him I had seen his statement, was most pleased with the report. I congratulated him on his splendid success and reminded him that we had never discussed what his interest was to be if he made good, that up to that time he had only received living expenses.”147

  Durant organized Champion’s company as a partially owned subsidiary of General Motors, with Champion as president.148 In compensation for Champion’s know-how, Durant awarded him with one-quarter of the Champion Ignition Company’s stock, worth $25,000.149

  “I asked him how he would like to have the stock issued,” Durant remembered. “He said that a man by the name of Schmidt had come with him from Boston, had been very helpful and he would like him to have $7,500, the balance $17,500 issued to himself.”150

  Durant, who thrived on action, had also purchased Cadillac Motor Company.151 The Champion Ignition Company was now making the spark plugs that powered Buicks, Oldsmobiles, and Cadillacs.

  After Champion had decamped from Boston, Robert Stranahan took over as manager of the Albert Champion Company in partnership with Frank and Spencer.152 Robert produced spark plugs in the Whittier Street warehouse and sold them under the Champion name.153 He produced six Champion varieties, retailing from seventy-five cents to $1.50, for cars and motorcycles. Robert trekked at regular intervals to Detroit and Toledo to gain accounts for his Champion spark plugs.154 The following summer the brothers renamed the business: The Champion Company.155

  With Albert’s Champion Ignition Company manufacturing an ever-greater number of spark plugs in Flint and Robert producing his line of Champion Company products, the two men and their companies were on course for another fight. Only one company would win the right to Champion’s name.

  THE EARLY HISTORY OF AMERICAN CARS OVER HERE MIGHT BE SAID TO BE THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE CADILLAC CAR.

  —LETTER FROM F. S. BENNETT OF F. S. BENNETT LTD., OF LONDON, THE PIONEER AGENT OF CADILLAC IN THE BRITISH ISLES, 19241

  Buick racing cars, powered by Champion’s spark plugs and magnetos,2 kept roaring ahead of the competition in America’s makeshift racing circuit over the 1908 and 1909 seasons. A select stable of Buick drivers were amassing more than five hundred trophies3 along with a gush of publicity from winning half the races they entered.4 Swiss-French driver Louis Chevrolet scored one of the most spectacular victories, capturing the ninety-one-mile Long Island Stock Chassis Derby in September 1909. He barreled around Suffolk County roads at an average speed close to 70 mph.5 Automobile pronounced his deed “the greatest sustained flight ever accomplished in an American road race.” Right behind followed teammate “Wild” Bob Burman for a one-two finish.6

  Despite the spectacular show of cars thundering around the twenty-three-mile course on an ideal autumn Saturday, spectator turnout was sparse. The grandstand near the Riverhead start/finish failed to sell enough tickets. The event lost money.7 All Chevrolet received for his skill and courage was a loving cup; Burman earned nothing. Nevertheless, they contributed to Buick’s reputation for power and reliability, and they dodged the fate of one of the race’s entrants, whose vehicle flipped over on a bend. The driver was seriously injured and his riding mechanic, in the shotgun seat, was killed.8

  Durant encouraged racing. Before the phrase “research and development” gained currency, he supported a team dedicated to stressing cars and engines to their limits so engineers could devise improvements.9 He ordered Buick’s inventive engineer, Walter Marr, to develop racing engines and cars.10 Marr’s pointy Van Dyke beard gave him the look of a wizard, one with grease under his fingernails. He had helped David Buick build the original Buick engine. Marr was so compulsive about improving his motors that someone had to intervene and take the prototype away to put the latest version into production.11

  A photo of the Buick racing team shows Chevrolet seated behind the steering wheel with Burman next to him, another A-list driver named Lewis Strang relaxing on the running board, and Marr leaning opposite Chevrolet, surrounded by twenty other mechanics, engineers, and drivers. At the end of the 1909 season, Durant awarded Chevrolet, Burman, and Strang a bonus of $10,000 ($260,000 in 2014) to share.12

  Louis Chevrolet was a bear of a man, a hard-muscled six feet and 215 pounds.13 He flexed every muscle steering the heavy, unforgiving vehicles of the day, hurling at high velocity around horse tracks and through S-turns and sharp corners on rough unpaved roads. He also had a rare mechanical flair. When he rolled up his shirtsleeves and shoved his arms into a car engine, always with a cigarette parked in a corner of his mouth and smoke curling up into his dark eyes, his hands performed magic on high-performance machinery.

  His aptitude with engines was instilled in the French-speaking Swiss city of La Chaux-de-Fonds, where he had been born on Christmas Day 1878. Nestled in the Watch Valley at the base of the Jura Mountains, the city has been an international center of watch and clock making since the seventeenth century.14 La Chaux-de-Fonds has been home to Heuer (predecessor to TAG Heuer), Omega, and Movado. Louis was the eldest son of a watch and clock maker.15 The elder Joseph Félicien Chevrolet, the extended family, and neighbors earned their livelihoods doing fine workmanship by hand.16 Social conversations branched into trade talk about turning out precise timepieces and novelty cuckoo clocks. Louis was ten and brother Arthur was two17 when the family moved across the French border to Beaune, in the wine region of Burgundy.18 There brother Gaston was born, eighteen years younger than Louis.19

  Chevrolet’s generation grew up hearing about France’s legendary seventeenth-century governor of the French colonies in North America, the soldier-statesman Louis de Baude de Frontenac.20 Frontenac ruled with Gaulic grandeur. He had extended France’s North American empire from Montreal all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.21 As a teenager Chevrolet had built a bicycle that he called Frontenac.22 He had competed with some success, which encouraged him to market Frontenac bicycles—until automobiles completely usurped his attention.

  When Louis left the provinces for Paris, he trained as a riding mechanic in the Darracq factory.23 The French referred to him as a mechanician. His job was to sit next to the Darracq test driver, Victor Hemery, to serve as an extra set of eyes and ears and provide him with information while he concentrated on the road ahead. And when something broke down and the vehicle halted, it was the mechanician’s job to hop out and make repairs. Chevrolet also held jobs in the factories of de Dion-Bouton, Panhard, and Mors.24 In 1900 he shipped out, at twenty-one, to follow Frontenac’s previous route to French-speaking Montreal.

  In those days, anyone with his background could secure an assignment as a chauffeur.25 Chauffeurs not only drove but also were responsible for all repairs from the wheels up. After six months he left Montreal to cross the US border on his way to Brooklyn and its French community, home to a de Dion-Bouton plant, his next employer. Among the French expats, Louis met the lovely, tall, dark-eyed Suzanne Treyvoux. To impress her he moved up to a better-paying job with more responsibility at Fiat in New York City.26 Fiat management entrusted him to drive in races. On May 20, 1905, he had scored an impressive victory in the one-mile feature race around a horse track in Brooklyn against the formidable Barney Oldfield—Chevrolet clocked in at 52 seconds, for 69 mph.27 Over the summer he beat Oldfield an impressive three times.28 Louis Chevrolet acquired a national reputation. He was seen as one of the first Europeans in US auto races. His biggest prize, however, was winning Suzanne’s heart.29 At the end of the season, they married.

  Unless a wheel fell off or some other disaster crippled his car, nothing kept Louis from finishing a race. Once while racing in Crown Point, Indiana, his car struck rocks in the road so hard that a cylinder was knocked out of commission, costing him one-quarter of his engine cap
acity, but he held on for victory. “I almost wanted to give up,” he admitted, “but something told me to stay in. It must have been the training I received while a mechanic for Hemery, the greatest motor-racing driver the world has ever known. He never has been known to give up. He taught me to drive that way in all my contests.”30

  Chevrolet brought his brothers to America. Arthur, eight years younger, followed him into racing. Louis and Arthur wanted to get hired to drive for the Buick team. In the spring of 1907 they took Gaston, age eleven, on the train to Flint. They heard that Durant was looking for a personal chauffeur, which paid well. The Man paired Louis and Arthur against each other in competition around a short dirt track outside the Buick factory dedicated to testing production models.31 Louis dove aggressively into the turns, hugged the straights, and stirred up dirt clouds. Durant watched Louis give Arthur a thrashing defeat. Louis was chagrined when The Man picked Arthur for chauffeur.32 Durant, looking out for his self-interests, appreciated that Arthur took no chances. Durant and Louis had only just met and already they had the first of several drastic misunderstandings. Both looked at the same thing with expectations poles apart, The Man every time holding the advantage.

  Louis talked about how one day he would retire from racing to design his own car. He had in mind a light vehicle styled after French favorites he admired—one that caught the eye and was inexpensive. The Man expressed interest.

  Buick racing cars had the same stock chassis and body as models for sale in showrooms. Model 10 with four cylinders served the Buick team well and led as the company’s bestseller. Model 10 retailed for $900,33 including Prest-O-Lite acetylene headlights and a bulb squeeze horn, which honked like a goose, but the sound penetrated through urban noise. Buick offered the option of a canvas top, priced at $50.34 For the 1910 racing season, engineer Walter Marr oversaw the building of two identical Buick Bugs,35 special stripped down race-cars. Instead of a flat front, they featured an aerodynamic nose and sat lower to the ground than most other racing models. On the hood was painted a big ram’s head, as though the car’s nose would butt through the wind.36 The engine fired flames out the front-side exhaust ports and roared as loud as Niagara Falls.37 The open-cockpit bucket seat was too small for a mechanician, which saved weight. Bugs were exclusively for Buick’s headline drivers, Chevrolet and Burman.