{"id":63002,"date":"2013-07-19T11:33:01","date_gmt":"2013-07-19T15:33:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedetroitbureau.com\/?p=63002"},"modified":"2013-07-19T11:33:01","modified_gmt":"2013-07-19T15:33:01","slug":"familiar-chevrolet-bowtie-badge-turns-100","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/2013\/07\/familiar-chevrolet-bowtie-badge-turns-100\/","title":{"rendered":"Familiar Chevrolet Bowtie Badge Turns 100"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
The Chevrolet bowtie circa 1913.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For a mass-market brand, Chevrolet has a rather formal logo.\u00a0 Exactly how General Motors\u2019 largest brand came up with its bowtie emblem is a matter of long-running debate. But what\u2019s clear is that the logo is about to celebrate its 100th<\/sup>anniversary.<\/p>\n

According to GM, the bowtie first appeared in the October 2, 1913 edition of The Washington Post in an ad advising car buyers to \u201cLook for this nameplate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Auto News From a Source You Trust!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The brand itself had been registered two years earlier \u2013 Chevy celebrating its own centennial in 2011 \u2013 by the Swiss \u00e9migr\u00e9 Louis Chevrolet. The son of a watchmaker, he left his home in the Jura Mountains in 1898, at the age of 20, to pursue a career in racing and auto manufacturing.<\/p>\n

Chevrolet went on to partner with William C. \u201cBilly\u201d Durant, the founder of General Motors, but the two soon had a falling out and in 1915, the man who gave the brand his name left for new ventures.\u00a0 His racing career petered out, he lost almost everything in the 1929 stock market crash and, ironically, Louis Chevrolet\u2019s final job was on an assembly line building \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 Chevrolets.<\/p>\n

But where did the bowtie logo come from?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Chevy logo had changed little by 1936.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Over the past century there has been plenty of debate and countless stories have appeared with often wildly contradictory explanations.<\/p>\n

Credit unmistakably goes to Billy Durant.\u00a0 But did he come up with its on his own?\u00a0 Or did it come to him during an overseas trip?<\/p>\n

According to one of the most popular tales, Durant and his wife were traveling through France when he spotted a bowtie-like image on the wallpaper of one of their hotel rooms.\u00a0 It struck a resonant chord.\u00a0 He tore off a small square, brought it back to the States and eventually transformed it into the familiar Chevrolet logo.<\/p>\n

(Chevrolet plans to export Spark EV. <\/em>Click Here<\/span><\/a> for more.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Durant himself had a stormy tenure at GM \u2013 or tenures.\u00a0 He founded the maker, lost control and left, then raised the capital to mount a brief takeover before being ousted by investors for good \u2013 and winding up running a bowling alley in Flint, Michigan, where Durant\u2019s family once made buggies and carriages.<\/p>\n

In a 1968 interview, his widow, Catherine, said the design actually came to Durant while reading newspaper in their hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas during a 1912 vacation.\u00a0 Her late husband, she recalled, proclaimed, \u201cI think this would be a very good emblem for the Chevrolet.\u201d<\/p>\n

(From Swiss watchmaker’s son to founder of Chevrolet. <\/em>Click Here<\/span><\/a> for more on Louis Chevrolet and the company he created.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The bowtie on a 2014 Chevrolet Camaro.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But Durant\u2019s daughter Margery had a very different recollection published in her 1929 book, \u201cMy Father,\u201d insisting he had been doodling designs during dinner.\u00a0 “I think it was between the soup and the fried\u00a0chicken one night that he sketched out the design that is used on the Chevrolet car to this day,” she wrote.<\/p>\n

Ken Kaufmann, a historian and editor for The Chevrolet Review, has spent a significant amount of time trying to sniff out the real story and he gives credence to Catherine Durant\u2019s long memory.\u00a0 In fact, he thinks he knows precisely what paper Durant was reading, the November 12, 1911 edition of the Atlanta Constitution.<\/p>\n

It just happens to contain an ad for the Southern Compressed Coal Company which produced a refined fuel known as \u201cCoalettes.\u00a0 And its logo was a slanted bowtie not unlike what every Chevrolet to come would soon begin wearing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The origin of the original Dodge logo, which resembles a 6-sided Jewish star, or Mogen David, remains uncertain.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Automotive logos have a wide range of sources.\u00a0 There\u2019s Henry Ford\u2019s name in a blue oval.\u00a0 Cadillac has used numerous variations of the coat of arms for Anthone Laumet de La Mothe sieur de Cadillac, founder of the City of Detroit.\u00a0 Both have been around for more than a century.\u00a0 Other logos have come and gone or undergone such dramatic changes as to no longer be recognizable in original form.<\/p>\n

One of the other automotive mysteries concerns the original logo adopted by the Dodge Brothers.\u00a0 It resembled the traditional six-sided Jewish star, or Mogen David.\u00a0 One of the more popular \u2013 though not necessarily accurate \u2013 explanations is that it honored the Jewish bankers who were the only ones to lend money to the new Dodge car company.\u00a0 They allegedly wanted to spite the virulently anti-Semetic Henry Ford.<\/p>\n

One thing\u2019s certain, the Chevrolet bowtie is routinely listed as one of the most recognizable brand emblems in the U.S., if not the world. And it clearly cost a lot less \u2013 even adjusting for inflation \u2013 than the $1 million Pepsi spent to redesign its logo in 2008.<\/p>\n

(GM global <\/em>s<\/em>urge 4%, maker could snatch worldwide lead from Toyota. <\/em>Click Here<\/span><\/a>.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was founded by a Swiss watchmaker’s son and pioneer auto racer. But while the record show Chevrolet was incorporated in 1911, the origin of the iconic Chevy bowtie logo — which first appeared 100 years ago — is shrouded in mystery. TheDetroitBureau.com sets out to cut through the fog of time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63004,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"make":[],"post-state":[],"category_old":[151],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63002"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63002"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=63002"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=63002"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=63002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}