Buick
The first two Buick automobiles were made in 1899 and 1900 at the "Buick Auto-Vim and Power Company" by chief-engineer Walter Marr, but company owner David Dunbar Buick was reluctant to begin making automobiles, being satisfied with stationary and marine engine production, so Marr left Buick in 1901 to found his own automobile company under his own name. His replacement was Eugene Richard, who applied for a patent in 1902 for Marr's valve-in-head (overhead valve) engine, which patent, number 771,095, was awarded to Richard in the name of Buick in 1904. In 1903, the third Buick automobile was made, this time by Richard, but in 1904 Buick, whose company was now called "Buick Motor Company," moved to Flint, Michigan, and Richard stayed behind. Marr was rehired in Flint as chief engineer, to begin making automobiles in production. That year, 37 Buick automobiles were made, production increasing to 750 in 1905, 1,400 in 1906, 4,641 in 1907, and 8,800 in 1908, taking the number one spot away from close competitors Oldsmobile, Ford, and Maxwell.
David Buick incorporated his company as the Buick Motor Company on May 19, 1903, in Detroit, Michigan. Buick had been financed by friend and fellow automobile enthusiast, Benjamin Briscoe, who sold control of the business to James H. Whiting (1842–1919), in September, 1903. of Flint Wagon Works, in Flint, Michigan. Whiting moved Buick to Flint that summer, to a location across the street from his factory, with the idea of adding Buick's engines to his wagons. David Buick stayed on as a manager, and re-hired Walter Marr as chief engineer. The engine Buick and Marr developed for this automobile was a two-cylinder valve-in-head engine of 159 cubic inches, with each cylinder horizontal and opposed to the other by 180 degrees. Whiting built only a few automobiles in 1904, by bringing Buick engines across the street where his workers shoehorned them into his wagons, before running out of capital, causing him to bring in William C. Durant that year as controlling investor. Durant spent the next four years turning Buick into the biggest-selling automobile brand in the US. Durant was co-owner, also in Flint, with Josiah Dallas Dort, of the Durant-Dort Carriage Company, which was the largest carriage-making company in the country and one of the largest in the world. Durant moved most production to the former Durant-Dort Imperial Wheel plant in Jackson, Michigan in 1905. Buick continued car production in Jackson through 1907, when Factory #1 was completed in Flint. The Jackson plant continued production with Buick trucks through 1912. David Buick sold his stock upon departure in 1906, and died in modest circumstances 25 years later. In 1907, Durant agreed to supply motors to R. S. McLaughlin in Canada, an auto maker, and in 1908 he founded General Motors.
Interstate 475 (Michigan)
David Dunbar Buick was a Scottish-born immigrant who moved to Detroit with his parents at the age of two in 1856–57. He quit school to supplement the family's income after his father's 1860 death. In the 1880s, he was a plumbing supplier in the Detroit area, inventing a process that created a cheaper white bathtub. Buick produced a method for permanently coating cast iron with vitreous enamel which allowed the production of "white" baths at lower cost. He later sold his plumbing business and the patents to American Standard. Using the profits from this sale, Buick started working on gasoline engines, and later automobiles. He eventually moved his operations from Detroit to the Flint Wagon Works. William Durant managed the fledgling Buick Manufacturing Company, making it the number one car-building company in the country by 1908. Durant later built on the foundation of Buick's company to create General Motors. In honor of Buick's contributions to Flint's manufacturing base, the Flint City Commission proposed naming I-475 after Buick. The freeway passed by the city's Buick plant and many of the employees would use the new freeway on their commutes to work. The Michigan Legislature passed Concurrent Resolution 22 in 1969 to add the name.