David Dunbar Buick
David Dunbar Buick, for whom the Buick automobile is named, came to Detroit from Scotland, with his parents in 1856 at age two. A plumbing inventory and businessman, Buick turned to building gasoline engines for boats on the Detroit River during the 1890s. By 1900 his first motor firm, Buick Auto-Vim and Power Company, was operating some six blocks north of this site near what is now the southwest corner of Beaubien and Lafayette Streets. The firm's overhead valve engines became famous for power. The first experimental Buick automobile was built in Detroit circa 1900. On May 19, 1903, David Buick incorporated the Buick Motor Company. That fall the firm was sold to the Flint Wagon Works in Flint where the first retail Buicks were built in 1904.