But closed-body cars sold at high prices. After inking the deal with Fisher, GM was able to work its way toward selling closed two-door Chevrolets at prices that were within striking distance of Ford’s Model T. “The rise of the closed body made it impossible for Mr. Ford to maintain his leading position in the low price field, for he had frozen his policy in the Model T, and the Model T was pre-eminently an open car design,” Mr. Sloan wrote. “The old master had failed to master change,” he added. “Don’t ask me why.”

The company did more than just sell cars; it revolutionized consumer behavior. In 1919, it created the General Motors Acceptance Corporation so that customers could buy cars on credit. This vastly expanded the market for mass production, and beyond the auto industry, it transformed the way that expensive items are bought and sold. It also used planned obsolescence: Vehicles debuted as new annual models. GM thrived by betting on the diversity of consumer preference. It was the first to offer cars in colors other than black and invested heavily in design. Its cars have become ingrained in American culture, from the 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air to the 1977 Pontiac Trans Am. Car buffs exult at the tail fins of an Eldorado or the split windows of a Corvette Stingray as if they were sculpted by Michelangelo.

Although GM profits certainly enriched stockholders, they also fueled the rise of the middle class. That included the company’s huge labor pool, particularly after a sit-down strike in 1936-37 won the United Auto Workers the right to bargain collectively. Later, GM pioneered an employee benefit plan, akin to a 401(k), to entice the workers that it desperately needed. That, plus no-interest loans on the homes the company built, spurred a migration of new workers from around the world. America would never be the same.

General Motors and its army of workers transformed scores of American cities, including Detroit and Flint; Janesville, Wisc.; Lordstown, Ohio; Trenton, N.J.; Indianapolis; and many other places that were built around their GM and Fisher plants — physically, politically and culturally. Like a photo negative, recent plant closures and cuts reveal how urban history is interlaced with General Motors history. Even in cities like Flint, where it has been in retreat for decades, GM’s shadow still looms: Mammoth vacant lots where auto plants once stood have required decades of work to repurpose, thanks in part to extensive soil contamination. At the same time, the patronage of yesteryear is visible in institutions like the Flint Institute of Arts, the Flint Symphony and Kettering University, the cooperative college formerly known as the General Motors Institute, founded in 1919.

But if GM was ahead of its time in some ways, it reflected it in others, especially around race. Its neighborhoods for working families were for whites only. Home prices kept out African-Americans, who were relegated to GM’s lowest-paying jobs. Insultingly, the same deed restrictions that prohibited livestock, liquor sales and outhouses in these sparkling new subdivisions also stipulated that they could not be occupied by anyone who was not “wholly of the white or Caucasian race.” In an ad from the 1920s, the exclusive realtor of GM homes assured buyers that “no shacks, huts, or foreign communities will be allowed.”

GM was far from alone in pushing a lily-white vision of the country’s future . And in putting its muscle behind segregation, it helped create patterns of inequality that remain with us today. This was exacerbated by the highways built through black neighborhoods to subsidize the new motoring class of suburban drivers. Disinvestment has consequences. It is not a coincidence that safe, affordable drinking water has been difficult to get in Flint, still recovering from a water crisis, or in Detroit, plagued by shut-offs.