The McLaughlin Motor Car Company
Dateline: 2/13/99
When people hear the name McLaughlin, they picture a very over priced fancy race car. The McLaughlin Motor Car Company of Canada, didn’t produce race cars, but they did make some nice looking vehicles which put Canada in the car manufacturing race.
The McLaughlin company goes back to 1867 to Tyrone, Ontario. A young farmer named Robert McLaughlin had built a horse-drawn sleigh. A neighbor who saw the sleigh offered to buy it. McLaughlin sold the sleigh and started production on a second one. This sleigh also sold. McLaughlin hired a blacksmith as he began his third sleigh and his small farm quickly grew into a sleigh and wagon manufacturing facility. McLaughlin moved the operation to Oshawa, Ontario and began a carriage plant. McLaughlin sleighs and carriages were of the best quality and construction and orders poured in so fast additional facilities were started across Ontario.
McLaughlin had three sons. The oldest son went on to become a chemist, but Sam and George became partners in the McLaughlin Carriage Company. In 1901, Sam and George went for a ride in the company bookkeeper’s automobile. The brothers raced back home, very excited, and tried to persuade their father into making a horseless carriage. Robert dismissed the idea stating the vehicles were noisy and dangerous and just a passing fad. In 1905, Sam test-drove several motor cars and decided the Buick was the most well designed car. With a friend named Bill Durant, Sam began plans for manufacturing Buick cars in Canada. The deal was never completed due to financial problems.
In 1907, Sam and George finally convinced their father that the automobile was a good investment and plans for McLaughlin Motor Car Company began. Just as production was starting, the engineer McLaughlin had hired became seriously ill. Sam sent an urgent telegram to his friend Durant who was now working for the Buick Motor Company in the United states. Within a few days, Durant arrived with two engineers. The original plans the two young men had started in 1905 were put in motion and in 1908, 154 McLaughlin cars with Buick engines were produced.
The McLaughlin was a favorite of many Canadians, however sales began to decline after the first year of production. Durant wanted to change the name to Buick, but McLaughlin said no. When sales began to decline even further, the name McLaughlin-Buick was agreed upon.
In 1908, Durant had combined Buick and Oldsmobile into General Motors. In 1910 he was booted out of the company. Durant went off on his own and started a new career with Chevrolet. In 1915, Durant had enough money and power to take control of General Motors. His first steps were to build a Chevrolet plant in Toronto. Remembering his Canadian friends, Durant made a deal with the McLaughlin brothers. Robert McLaughlin reluctantly sold his carriage business to make room for production of Chevrolets alongside Buicks at the Oshawa plant. The Chevrolet bodies were made according to Sam McLaughlin’s designs.
In 1918, the family McLaughlin business became General Motors of Canada. The company had grown so large that the McLaughlin family could no longer run it. GM management agreed to buy the McLaughlin business, and kept Sam and George on board as president and vice president. Sam remained president until 1945.
By 1938, GM of Canada had produced one million vehicles. In 1965, Canada and the United States signed the Canada-U.S. Automotive Products Trade Agreement (Autopact). This agreement allowed GM of Canada to increase its production dramatically.
Today GM of Canada produces more than one million vehicles a year. 85 percent of those vehicles are sold to the United States. GM is Canada’s largest manufacturer of automobiles and automobile components. In the 1980s, GM began an $8 billion reindustrialization program creating the GM Autoplex in Oshawa. This facility employs over 13,000 men and women and is the largest and most modern vehicle manufacturing complex in North America.
And to think it all started in a small barn owned by a farmer named Robert McLaughlin who though the automobile was just a passing fad.