Updated on July 10, 2009.

General Motors announced Friday that it completed the sale of its strongest brands and other assets to a new company that's funded by the U.S. Treasury Department. The sale allows the auto maker to swiftly emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and launch the "new GM." It s a turn of events that few could have envisioned 50 years ago, when the company was on its way to becoming America s dominant auto maker.

Indeed, since its inception in 1908, General Motors evolved into an icon of corporate America. The innovations introduced by its executives and engineers shaped the cars that Americans drive and cemented the automobile s role in shaping the nation s society for the latter half of the 20th century. More than that, though, GM became deeply intertwined with America s economy, politics and culture.

A few examples: In 1911, GM revolutionized the American automobile with the introduction of the electric self-starter on a Cadillac, making cars safe and easy to start. Until then, drivers had used hand cranks, which broke numerous shoulders and caused several deaths. Years later, GM helped carry U.S. troops through World War II when it transformed its assembly lines to roll out tanks and ships. The firm remained profitable during the Great Depression and in 1937 allowed its workers to unionize, marking a major breakthrough for organized labor. And in the 1950s, GM became more than a symbol of corporate America. It became emblematic of what corporate America could help you achieve. Work hard and your family will own not one but two Oldsmobiles. Or maybe a red Corvette sitting in the driveway.

A look at key moments in the history of General Motors

The future for GM is looking much different. The company declared bankruptcy on June 1 then promptly laid out a plan to create the new GM. By early July, the company sold its most viable assets to a company funded by the U.S. and emerged from that bankruptcy. Now, the U.S. government is in the driver s seat with ownership of almost 61% of the company. A health trust held by the United Auto Workers union has a 17.5% stake, GM s bond holders control 10% and the Canadian government would get 11.7%.

It s been a long road to the auto maker's bankruptcy and the creation of the new GM. SmartMoney took a look at 13 key moments over the last century that helped shape GM and the American automobile. Of course, no timeline could capture every key GM event but here are some of particular importance to the company and the nation.

In 1904, William Billy Durant, a 43-year-old high-school dropout, former cigar salesman and manufacturer of horse-drawn vehicles in Flint, Mich., took over the struggling Buick Motor Company. Within three years, Durant had made Buick the No. 1 car in America despite never having driven a horseless carriage himself, according to William Pelfrey, a retired director of executive communications at GM and author of the book Billy, Alfred and General Motors. On Sept. 16, 1908, Durant registered the name General Motors, a nod to his longer-term goal of creating a corporate parent that would oversee smaller brands. Within a few years, Durant had added Oldsmobile, Oakland (which later became Pontiac) and GMC to the GM family.

Within a year of GM s incorporation, Durant had acquired 25 companies a pace that did not please the company s board of directors. "You could make the case that he had attention deficit disorder," Pelfrey says. "He loved the thrill of the deal and was basically a salesman who hated the responsibility of managing things. [GM's management] was a mess." In 1910, GM s board used a brief market downturn as an excuse to fire Durant. Shortly after leaving, Durant started the automaker Chevrolet, named for the Buick race car driver Louis Chevrolet. The company was so successful that Durant started aggressively purchasing GM stock, and in 1916 he owned enough shares to regain control of the company and return to the boardroom. A year later, Chevrolet became part of GM.

In 1919, John J. Raskob, the vice president for finance at GM and the chemical company DuPont (then a major GM shareholder), created the General Motors Acceptance Corporation, known today as GMAC. The idea was for GMAC to provide financing to GM s dealers, but it soon started serving consumers, as well. GMAC was one of the first financing arms owned by an automobile company.

Durant s buying spree continued until 1920 when General Motors owned 40 independently-run companies. Once more, Durant became financially overextended and was kicked out by his board this time for good.

Raskob bailed out GM by arranging for DuPont to purchase $25 million in GM stock, giving the chemical giant a 43% stake in the company.

Alfred P. Sloan took over GM after the second ouster of Durant, and in 1923 he was named president of the company. A year later, he handed down his legendary marketing strategy -- "A car for every purse and purpose" -- popularizing the idea of market segmentation. In 1926, GM also became the first automaker to hire a full-time, in-house design staff.

The staff's first product, the 1927 Cadillac LaSalle, was the first car to be designed to sport curves and employ the principles of aerodynamics.

General Motors didn t lose a penny during the Great Depression. Whenever the firm found itself in a cash crunch, it just "laid off workers left and right," says Mike Smith, the director of the Walter Reuther library at Wayne State University, which hosts the archives of the United Autoworkers Union. On Dec. 30, 1936, several thousand GM workers sat down at the company s plant in Flint, Mich. to protest poor working conditions. They didn t leave for 44 days. "GM turned off the heat, the water, the electricity -- they tried to use security to force out the workers," Smith says. At one factory, the workers fought back by tossing four-pound car-door hinges from the roof. GM s production capacity fell by as much as 90% before the dispute was settled. On Feb. 11, 1937, the company signed a page-and-a-half contract recognizing the UAW as the official bargaining body for GM workers.

World War II was good to General Motors and GM was critical to the war effort. In 1942, the company converted all of its plants for military production and became the largest provider of wartime goods. GM workers made more than $12 billion worth of tanks, aircraft engines, ships, submarines, machine guns (pictured at right), bullets and helmets. They hired hundreds of thousands of workers, including women, marking the first time they held a major role in the workplace.

If you ask old-timers at GM what made them most proud of the company, almost universally they say World War II, Pelfrey says.

GM continued to grow after World War II. As consumers succumbed to conspicuous consumption, they rushed to buy Buicks, Chevies and Cadillacs. The rise of a savvier consumer, the car enthusiast, led the company to develop more options for its vehicles. In 1948, Cadillac and Oldsmobile introduced the industry s first V8 engine. Two years later, Chevrolet offered the first low-priced car with fully-automatic transmission. Cadillac, Oldsmobile and Buick started offering power breaks and power steering in 1952 and 1953. In 1953, Chevrolet introduced the first production sports car, the Corvette. In 1962, the year when GM produced its 75-millionth U.S.-made car, the company s market share peaked at 51%. It has been going down ever since.

By the late 1970s, fuel efficiency had become an important issue for American consumers, particularly among those who had driven through the oil spike a few years earlier. Drivers were drawn to smaller, more efficient Asian and European cars, but GM went a different route. In 1978, the firm introduced its first Diesel Oldsmobile: a car so poorly made that Americans have yet to warm up to diesel fuel 30 years later. They took the V8 engine of an old Oldsmobile, made some modifications and threw it on the market, says Dick Messer, director of the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. It was a disaster. Overall, the cars made in the 1970s -- by GM and the other auto makers alike -- were so terrible that they inspired the Lemon Law, Messer says. Shortly thereafter, GM refocused its efforts on higher-margin trucks and SUVs: a decision that ultimately led to GM s bankruptcy filing today.

In the 1980s and 1990s, GM focused on expanding its global operations. It built new plants in Europe and entered into joint-venture agreements with China and India. Saturn, Saab and Hummer joined the family during that period, but their tenure at GM would be fairly short-lived.

This March, GM announced that it plans to sell all three brands. Failing that, the company will phase them out.

As prices at the pump hit $4 and the housing market started crumbling, consumers grew more interested in smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. GM s gas-guzzlers sat idling on dealership lots, despite generous incentives and low-rate financing. In 2008, auto sales fell 17% compared to the previous year. In November 2008, executives from the Big Three flew to Washington to ask for $25 billion in government help. The Senate blocked that bailout, but then President George W. Bush intervened and gave GM and Chrysler $13.4 billion from the rescue fund for the financial industry. To get further financing from the government, GM had to produce a restructuring plan for long-term profitability. Its deadline, set by President Obama soon after he took office, was June 1, 2009.

Almost one year after its 100th anniversary, General Motors files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and lays out a plan to create the "new GM" -- an entity that would consist of only some of the company's strongest brands that will be largely funded by the U.S. government.

Company sells its most viable assets, including its Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC brands, to a new entity funded by the U.S. Treasury Department. The sale marks the end of the company's short-lived Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Today marks a new beginning for General Motors, one that will allow every employee, including me, to get back to the business of designing, building and selling great cars and trucks and serving the needs of our customers, said Fritz Henderson, president and CEO in a statement.