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NEWS
Chevrolet bowtie celebrates centenary
Biggest GM brand's bowtie to mark its 100th anniversary this year with 25 product launchesChevrolet has commenced celebrations for its famous bowtie badge’s 100th anniversary in 2013 by committing to 25 product launches in its centenary year.
Although it doesn’t list them, the upcoming Trax is named as a chief new entrant from the bowtie brand, inextricably linked with GM Holden, which will launch the all-new compact/city SUV in Australia next month.
GM admits it doesn’t know the precise origin of Chevrolet’s bowtie symbol, which was introduced by Chevrolet co-founder William C Durant on the 1914 Chevrolet H-2 Royal Mail and the H-4 Baby Grand in 1913 – two years after Chevrolet was established.
Some say Durant was inspired by the wallpaper design in a Parisian hotel, but his widow and daughter have differing theories. In her 1929 book My Father, Margery Durant said he sometimes doodled nameplate designs on pieces of paper at the dinner table.
“I think it was between the soup and the fried chicken one night that he sketched out the design that is used on the Chevrolet car to this day,” she wrote.
However, Durant’s widow Catherine said in a 1968 interview that the bowtie design originated from a holiday in Hot Springs in 1912, when Durant spotted a design in a newspaper in their hotel room and said: “I think this would be a very good emblem for the Chevrolet.”
Mrs Durant never confirmed what the logo was, but an investigation by The Chevrolet Review editor and historian Ken Kaufmann discovered a slanted bowtie image alongside an advertisement for ‘Coalettes’ by the Southern Compressed Coal Company a year earlier in the November 12, 1911 edition of Atlanta’s The Constitution newspaper.
Although it has evolved over time, the first use of a bowtie logo by Chevrolet appeared in the October 2, 1913 edition of The Washington Post and, whatever its origin, Chevrolet claims it has been worn by no less than 215 million cars and trucks in the century since, equating to a Chevrolet car, crossover or truck sold every 6.39 seconds in one of 140 countries.
As GM’s biggest brand and the world’s fourth-largest, Chevrolet set a sales record of 2.5 million vehicles in the first six months of this year, and looks set to eclipse last year’s record of almost five million sales in more than 140 countries.
“The Chevrolet bowtie is recognised around the world and has become synonymous with American ingenuity,” said Chevrolet Chief Marketing Officer Tim Mahoney.
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