IV 
110TH CONGRESS 
2D SESSION 
H. RES. 1445 
Commending the General Motors Corporation on the occasion of its 100th 
anniversary. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
SEPTEMBER 16, 2008 
Mr. KILDEE (for himself, Mr. DINGELL, Mr. ROGERS of Michigan, Mrs. MIL-
LER of Michigan, Ms. SUTTON, Mr. EHLERS, Mr. KNOLLENBERG, Ms. 
KAPTUR, Mr. LEVIN, Mr. STUPAK, Mr. CAMP of Michigan, Mr. HOEK-
STRA, Mr. MCCOTTER, Mr. WALBERG, Mr. UPTON, Ms. KILPATRICK, Mr. 
VISCLOSKY, and Mr. CONYERS) submitted the following resolution; which 
was referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce 
RESOLUTION 
Commending the General Motors Corporation on the occasion 
of its 100th anniversary. 
Whereas General Motors Corporation (GM) traces its history 
to September 16, 1908, when its colorful founder William 
C. (Billy) Durant incorporated the company with a vi-
sionary idea that several car makers combined under one 
company umbrella would be more effective and have more 
growth potential than one brand on its own; 
Whereas by 1916, the General Motors family included the 
legendary Chevrolet, Oakland (later Pontiac), GMC, 
Oldsmobile, Buick, and Cadillac brands and under 
Durant’s successor, Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. (often called the 
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•HRES 1445 IH 
father of modern management), GM soon adopted the 
equally revolutionary strategy of ‘‘a car for every purse 
and purpose’’, dividing the vehicle market into price seg-
ments ranging from low-price to luxury and targeting 
each brand and model of General Motors to a distinct 
segment, something no other manufacturer or marketer 
had ever done; 
Whereas this milestone innovation, plus the equally unprece-
dented innovation of the annual model change, enabled 
General Motors to become America’s number one seller of 
vehicles in 1926, a position the company still holds today; 
Whereas in the 1930s, with the Great Depression, tensions 
in the workplace spread across America, setting the stage 
for the historic GM ‘‘sit-down’’ strike in Flint, Michigan, 
which led to General Motors becoming the first company 
to recognize the United Automobile Workers of America 
(UAW), soon the country’s largest union, and new health 
care and pension benefits first negotiated between the 
UAW and GM in 1950 became the norm for all American 
industry in the second half of the twentieth century; 
Whereas with America’s entry into World War II, no com-
pany converted faster or more comprehensively to war-
time production than General Motors, leading to it being 
called the greatest industrial transformation in history, 
with more than 200 plants in North America shifting to 
the production of airplanes, tanks, machine guns, and 
other military vehicles and goods in a matter of months; 
Whereas General Motors alone supplied the forces of the 
United States with more than $12 billion in military 
goods (several hundreds of billions when converted to to-
day’s dollars), more than any other company, leading the 
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•HRES 1445 IH 
late management theorist Peter Drucker to go so far as 
to say that ‘‘General Motors won the war for America’’; 
Whereas in September 2001, GM’s ‘‘Keep America Rolling’’ 
Program is credited with jump-starting the American 
economy in a period of great financial uncertainty and 
anxiety following the terrorist attacks and the worse loss 
of life and destruction on American soil since Pearl Har-
bor; 
Whereas since its inception in 1908, GM has sold more than 
308 million cars and trucks in the United States and 
more than 445 million worldwide and nearly 1 million 
Americans earn their living either building or selling GM 
vehicles; 
Whereas in the past seven years, GM’s capital investments in 
the United States have totaled more than $31 billion, 
more than double and triple those of foreign automakers 
with U.S. operations; and 
Whereas GM is committed to playing a leading role in pro-
viding meaningful solutions to address America’s energy 
needs and to remove the automobile from the environ-
mental equation with advanced technology and alternate 
sources of propulsion that will include the first mass-pro-
duced extended range electric vehicle, the Chevy Volt, in 
2010: Now, therefore, be it 
Resolved, That the House of Representatives com-
mends and congratulates the General Motors Corporation 
on the occasion of its 100th anniversary. 
Æ 
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