Yes, there was a Mr. Buick.
Many people know the story of Henry Ford–how the inveterate tinkerer fiddled with all things mechanical. A pleasant young man he was, so much so that the Detroit Edison company he worked for allowed him to make use of some unutilized space. There and his buddies would mess around with all manner of scrap pieces of wood and metal they could lay their young hands on. One thing led to another, of course (most of detailed in Comeback!) and he eventually succeeded for the first time with the Ford Motor Company we know today. In other words, the classic rags to riches story (well documented by the full-time staff Mr. Ford employed to make sure the world knows all of this).
David Dunbar Buick was different–his was a riches to rags story. Many entrepreneurs of the time succeeded at other businesses before finding their place in the emerging automobile industry. Ben Briscoe and his brother headed a successful sheet metal business (with funding from no less than the mighty J. P. Morgan himself).
Buick was what we would today call a techie. One of the things he invented in the 1890s was a way to bond porcelain to steel, giving the world the white bathtub. Well, anyone who was anyone had to have one (we still do) so Mr. Buick and Mr. Sherwood, his partner, made a small fortune selling bathtubs and sinks.
Success so often brings with it “same old, same old.” Day after day you have to do the same thing which made you successful. Buick, however, became bored with that same old, same old and spent more and more time tinkering with engines in his backyard shop. He owned a yacht and liked to race it. Soon he was winning. So he and Sherwood sold the plumbing business and Buick went into engines full-time, developing what it reputed to be the world’s first OHV (overhead valve) engine.
Engines led to that new thing they called the automobile. Dave Buick, however, did not display a business sense to match his technical savvy. Long story short (most of it in the book, of course) he ended up selling out to Mr. Briscoe mentioned above, who sold it to Jim Whiting of Flint.
Who palmed the Buick company off to our (and his) good friend Billy (after some delightful subterfuge). Mr. Buick, however, was not a big fan of Billy’s high-energy approach to life and business. So he quit, leaving behind the name Billy turned into America’s top seller for 1906, and the foundation for General Motors, leading the rest of his life in obscurity and on the brink of poverty.