Quote:
Originally posted by carzzy
CorvetteSS,
The symbol that you are referring to, is the Chevrolet "bow tie". You are correct that it was taken from wallpaper. William C Durant the founder of General Motors saw the bow tie design on wallpaper in a hotel room in Paris in 1908. The other symbol used with the bow tie is a French symbol that has been used in France for hundreds of years. Frenchman Louis Chevrolet, auto builder and race car driver built the first Chevrolet, before General Motors
bought him out in 1918. He went on to build cars later but, could not use his name on them.
carzzy
|
Oh so close...
Here's some tidbits from stuff I have laying around the office.
Louis Chevrolet was born on Christmas Day, 1878 , in La Chaux de Fonds, Switzerland. From racing and building bicycles in his childhood years he left his home in La Chauxde-Fonds, Switzerland in 1900 to move to North America, he set in motion a chain of events that would leave indelible marks on American automotive and motorsports history.
His passion for performance first took him to the race track in 1905, the same year he got married, and he beat the great Barney Oldfield in a May 20th race in the Bronx, NY, driving a 90 horsepower Fiat at a speed of 69 MPH.
In 1907, Chevrolet's racing reputation led to his first encounter with W.C. Durant, the "father" of General Motors, who put his genius to work on the creative design concepts that drove the famous Buick racing team to greatness.
Chevrolet drove a Buick to victory in the fifth "Indy car" race ever run, a 395.65-mile event on June, 1909, in Crown Point, IN. It was part of the AAA National Championship, which included races at the brand new Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
His fateful encounter with Durant eventually led to the formation in 1911 of the Chevrolet Motor Company where, despite little formal education, Chevrolet designed and engineered the first version of the vehicle which more than 125 million units later, still bears the Chevrolet name.
Chevrolet's fierce independence caused him to leave the infant Chevrolet company and embark upon a venture which took him back to his first love, racing.
He formed the Frontenac Motor Corporation to build high performance cylinder heads for Ford engines. His 10 career Indy car wins made him the most successful of the three racing Chevrolet brothers, Arthur, Gaston and Louis. He won over 27 major events during his career.
Louis Chevrolet, whose motto was "never give up;' took his last laps at Indy in 1926 as the official pace car driver.
A story in Chevrolet Pro Management Magazine, October 1986, which was copied in the May 1987 G&D, told that W.C. Durant did not copy the design from the wallpaper in a French hotel room, and that according to Mrs. Durant, the bowtie emblem was first seen by her husband in an illustrated Virginia newspaper, while they were vacationing in Hot Springs, Virginia around 1912. Mrs. Durant was quoted as recalling, “We were in a suite reading the papers, and he saw this design and said, ‘I think this would be a very good emblem for the Chevrolet’ ” She did not explain how the newspaper used the emblem.
The 75 th Anniversary issue of The Chevrolet Story, 1986, gave both bowtie story versions with the comment that Billy Durant, himself, confirmed the Paris hotel story, which was later refuted by his wife with the Sunday newspaper in Virginia story.
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