Charles Williams Nash was born on January 28, 1864 in De Kalb County, Illinois, United States. He was the older of two children and only son of David L. Nash and Anna (Caldwell) Nash. The family was broken up by separation of the parents in 1870, and Nash was bound out to a farmer in Genesee City, Michigan.
He had only three months of schooling per year while he was "bound out" to perform farm chores.
Running away when he was twelve years old, he worked as a farm laborer and later as operator of a steam hay press.
After a brief interlude in various odd jobs, he went to work for the Durant-Dort Carriage Company as an upholstery trimmer; according to one account, he had attracted Dort's attention while working as a cherry picker on Dort's farm. Rising rapidly, Nash became plant superintendent within a few years, and when Dort's partner, William C. Durant, left the carriage business in 1904 to take charge of the Buick Motor Car Company, he picked Nash to replace him as general manager. Nash introduced the straightline belt conveyer into the assembly of carriages.
Six years later Nash again took over from Durant, but under different conditions. Durant, having built up Buick, went on to found the General Motors Company in 1908. Unsuccessfully doubling as president of both companies, he overextended himself financially and in 1910 found his companies short of funds. By this time the Durant-Dort Carriage Company's principal business was building automobile bodies for Buick; and as the troubles of General Motors mounted, the carriage company was not being paid. On Nash's suggestion, Durant put him in charge of the Buick company to try to put its affairs in order.
When Durant, now president of Chevrolet, sought to regain control of General Motors by offering to exchange Chevrolet shares for those of GM, he met a willing response among General Motors stockholders and took over the presidency again in 1916. With backing from Storrow, Nash now bought the Thomas B. Jeffery Company of Kenosha, Wiskonsin, makers of the original Rambler, and renamed it the Nash Motors Company.
He went to Washington in 1918, during World War I, to take over a languishing program of aircraft production. Nash was given credit for doing a difficult job well, but the war ended before his efforts could have any significant results. Back in the automobile industry, he carried the Nash Motors Company through the intense competitive struggle of the 1920's to emerge as one of the few profitable independent producers. By 1929, 75 percent of the market for motor vehicles was in the hands of the "Big Three" (General Motors, Ford, Chrysler), and 90 percent of the rest was shared by the leading independents (Hudson, Nash, Packard, Studebaker, Willys-Overland). At this time, Nash's company had assets greater than the more pretentious Durant Motors created by his former employer. Nash concentrated primarily on a single well-designed car in the upper-medium price range. He was aware, however, that some diversification was essential in order to survive in automobile manufacturing. His first move in this direction was the one unsuccessful venture that appears on his record. In 1919, in the expansive optimism that followed the end of the war, Nash acquired the Lafayette Motor Company of Indianapolis and undertook the production of an eight-cylinder car for the luxury market. This enterprise was liquidated after five years with a loss of $2 million, although the Lafayette name was preserved and used on later Nash models. Nash then moved in the opposite direction and bought the plant of the bankrupt Mitchell Motor Car Company of Racine, Wiskonsin, in 1924 and converted it to the production of a light, medium-priced car named the Ajax. This venture was more successful, and the car, renamed after two years the Nash Light Six, remained on the market through the 1930's. Nash never attempted to compete in the mass market. He was not the type to be attracted to a very risky prospect, and events seem to have vindicated his judgment, for his company was one of the few independent automobile manufacturers not only to survive the depression but to do so without undergoing a major financial crisis.
Nash retired from the presidency in 1932 and became chairman of the board, a position he retained until shortly before his death. His outstanding achievement in this position was to bring about the merger in 1937 of Nash with the Kelvinator Company as the Nash-Kelvinator Corporation. The combination of an automobile company with a manufacturer of refrigerators and other household appliances was a conscious acknowledgment that product diversification offered the small independent producer the best chance of survival.
Nash was active in civic affairs in Kenosha and received special recognition for his services to the Boy Scouts. Retiring after World War II, he moved to Beverly Hills, California, where he died of a heart ailment less than a year after his wife's death. His body was placed in the mausoleum of Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale.
Throughout his life Nash showed the influence of his early poverty. He was cautious and conservative in his methods; his career shows no bold innovations, but methodical and sound management. It was fully in character that of his estate of over $43 million, some $12 million was in savings accounts and most of the rest in bonds.
He is remembered for founding Nash Motors Company in 1916 that continued to manufacture automobiles which appealed to America's middle class until the mid-1950s. Nash served as president of General Motors. He restored that corporation to organizational and financial stability. Unprofitable subsidiaries were liquidated, and the $15 million loan advanced by the Storrow syndicate to save General Motors from bankruptcy was paid off by the end of 1915. In pursuit of stability, Nash curtailed expenditures and withheld dividends on the common stock; it was a course suited to his own essentially cautious temperament, and it was undoubtedly necessary, but it was not popular with stockholders.
On April 23, 1884, he married Jessie Halleck, daughter of a Genesee County farmer. They had three daughters: Mae, Lena, and Ruth.
