Borg-Warner Corp., 1958

In 1918, after 14 years in Moline, Illinois, Charles W. Borg and Marshall Beck moved their automobile clutch manufacturing business to Chicago. In 1928, Borg & Beck merged with three other Midwestern auto parts makers—Warner Gear of Muncie, Indiana; Mechanics Universal Joint of Rockford, Illinois; and Marvel Carburetor of Flint, Michigan—to form Borg-Warner, headquartered on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. This new company expanded quickly. In 1929, the Ingersoll Steel Disc Co. of Galesburg, Illinois, joined Borg-Warner; in 1935, the company bought the re-rolling mill of the Calumet Steel Co. in Chicago Heights. Annual sales rose from about $50 million in 1929 to over $600 million by the late 1950s, when Borg-Warner became a leading manufacturer of automatic transmissions. Meanwhile, Borg-Warner entered the industrial plastics business and opened offices and plants overseas. In the early 1970s, the company employed more than 5,000 people in the Chicago area, along with tens of thousands around the world. In 1978, Borg-Warner began to build a large security services business; during the 1990s, this operation, known as Borg-Warner Security and later as Burns International Services, spun off and was soon bought by a Swedish corporation. Meanwhile, Borg-Warner sold its plastics and chemicals operations to General Electric. By the late 1990s, BorgWarner Inc. had again become an auto parts specialist, with about $2.5 billion in annual sales and about 1,300 employees in the Chicago area.

This entry is part of the Encyclopedia's Dictionary of Leading Chicago Businesses (1820-2000) that was prepared by Mark R. Wilson, with additional contributions from Stephen R. Porter and Janice L. Reiff.