Durant-Dort Carriage Company was a manufacturer of horse-drawn vehicles in Flint, Michigan. Founded in 1886, by 1900 it was the largest carriage manufacturer in the country. This very successful business made the partners rich men and it became the core on which William C. Durant and J. Dallas Dort began to build General Motors. Durant sold out of this business in 1914 and it stopped manufacturing carriages in 1917. Durant-Dort Carriage Company was dissolved in 1924. The premises were taken over by J Dallas Dort's Dort Motor Car Company which he closed in 1924. Flint Road-Cart Company In 1886 William C. Durant rode in a friend's spring-suspension road-cart built by the Coldwater Road-Cart Company of Coldwater, Michigan. Impressed with the smoothness of the ride, Durant went to Coldwater and bought the road-cart's patent and manufacturing rights from Schmedlin and O'Brien for $1500. With Josiah Dallas Dort as an equal partner he founded Flint Road-Cart Company. Dort as president, handled administrative details for the firm and manufacturing arrangements — to begin with the carts were made for them by William A. Paterson — while Durant handled sales and promotion. Their first office was in Durant's fire insurance agency in downtown Flint. Durant had bought the rights to the road-cart with borrowed money so newly married Durant immediately left Flint and set up a chain of jobbers to sell the carts as far away as Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago. With just one finished cart at home he returned from his first trip with orders for 600 road-carts. Flint Road-Cart sold 4000 carts its first year, and grew quickly from there. In 1893 they incorporated Flint Road-Cart Company with a substantial capital, much of it raised from local investors, and leased a factory on Water Street originally used by the Flint Woolen Mills. There they assembled their road-carts from bought-in components. After that, Flint Road-Cart expanded by starting or buying other businesses that produced not only vehicles, but the components for vehicles as well. They marketed them as "Blue Ribbon Vehicles". Durant-Dort Carriage Company Flint Road-Cart Company changed its name to Durant-Dort Carriage Company in November 1895. By 1900 they were building 50,000 vehicles each year, from around 14 locations and they were a major rival of Flint Wagon Works. In 1906 they were making 480 vehicles each day with 1,000 workers. Durant-Dort owned not just the Flint manufacturing works, but also other