The Budd Company is a metal fabricator and major supplier of body components to the automobile

Automobile

An automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...

 industry, and was formerly a manufacturer of stainless steel passenger rail cars during the 20th century.

The company's headquarters are in Troy, Michigan

Troy, Michigan

Troy is a city in Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan, and is a suburb of Detroit. The population was 80,980 at the 2010 census, making it the 11th-largest city in Michigan by population, and the largest city in Oakland County...

. It was founded in 1912 by Edward G. Budd

Edward G. Budd

Edward Gowen Budd was an American inventor and businessman.Budd was born in Delaware in 1870. He studied engineering in Philadelphia in 1888, and in 1899 he took his knowledge of pressed steel to the railroad industry...

, whose fame came from his company's invention of the 'shotweld' technique for joining pieces of stainless steel

Stainless steel

In metallurgy, stainless steel, also known as inox steel or inox from French "inoxydable", is defined as a steel alloy with a minimum of 10.5 or 11% chromium content by mass....

 without damaging its anti-corrosion properties.
In 1916, Budd built one of the first steel car bodies, for Dodge

Dodge

Dodge is a United States-based brand of automobiles, minivans, and sport utility vehicles, manufactured and marketed by Chrysler Group LLC in more than 60 different countries and territories worldwide....

.