From biggest carmaker to biggest bankruptcy

At its height, General Motors (GM) was bigger than any other car company in world.

Founded when the US still had fewer than 10,000 cars in total, the carmaker was once the symbol of American prestige and its brands respected all over the world.

Yet GM has now suffered the world's biggest industrial bankruptcy.

GM as we know it began in 1908, though its founder William "Billy" Durant had already made his name selling horse-drawn carriages in Flint, Michigan and had acquired a controlling stake in the fledgling Buick Motor Company.

Humble origins

Though the carmaker started with Buick, within the year Mr Durant had put Cadillac, Pontiac precursor Oakland Motor Company and the Oldsmobile all under its umbrella.

The Oldsmobile, one of the most evocative brands, was actually quite new. The first one was made in 1897.

Cadillac was bought for $5.5m in 1909, a huge sum at that time that would equate to over $130m in today's money.

The company set about a rapid expansion, setting up foreign operations to sell its cars abroad and, critically, acquiring stakes in Germany's Opel and the UK's Vauxhall during the 1920s.

The company joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1925, where it has been ever since.

Mr Durant also set up what was to become another iconic US brand, Chevrolet.

And it was GM's decision to recognise the fledging United Auto Workers (UAW) union, which could end up taking a major stake in the carmaker during any bankruptcy proceedings, which set the pattern for industrial relations in the industry.

The move came after GM workers in Flint went on a sit-down strike in December 1936, at the height of industrial militancy during the Great Depression.

But the company really started to take off after World War II.

In the 1950s, when GM's chief executive Charles Wilson became Secretary of Defense, he famously said at his confirmation hearing when asked about any conflicts of interest that "what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa".

GM was not only the biggest carmaker in the world, but the biggest company in the world. It had over 50% share of the US car market.

It was so large in this period, with more than 50% of the US domestic car market, that its only worry was that it might be broken up by the government on anti-trust grounds.