Above all, Sloan had no friends within the GM group. He was a warm and had been a gregarious man until deafness cut him off from easy human contact. Although he had had close friends, he outlived them all - he lived well into his nineties. All these friends had been outside General Motors. Indeed the one friend who had been in GM walter p. Chrysler, did not become a personal friend until after he had left GM and had , upon Sloan's advice and with strong support from sloan , started his own competing automobile company.