Chevrolet , also known as Chevy , is an American brand of vehicle produced by General Motors (GM). Chevrolet was founded by Louis Chevrolet and ousted GM founder William C. Durant on November 3, 1911, and later acquired by General Motors in 1918. Chevrolet was positioned by Alfred Sloan to sell a lineup of mainstream vehicles to directly compete against Henry Ford's Model T in the 1920s, with "Chevrolet" or "Chevy" being at times synonymous with GM. In North America, Chevrolet sells and produces a wide variety of automobiles, from subcompact cars to medium-duty commercial trucks, whereas in Europe, the brand name is used mainly for automobiles produced in Korea by General Motors.
On November 3, 1911, Swiss race car driver and automotive engineer Louis Chevrolet co-founded the Chevrolet Motor Car Company in Detroit with William C. Durant and investment partners William Little (maker of the Little automobile) and Dr. Edwin R. Campbell (son-in-law of Durant) and in 1912 R. S. McLaughlin GEO of General Motors in Canada.
Durant was ousted from the management of General Motors in 1910 for five years. He took over the Flint Wagon Works, incorporating the Mason and Little companies. As head of Buick Motor Company prior to founding GM, Durant had hired Louis Chevrolet to drive Buicks in promotional races. Durant planned to use Chevrolet's reputation as a racer as the foundation for his new automobile company.
Actual design work for the first Chevy, the costly Series C Classic Six, was drawn up by Etienne Planche, following instructions from Louis. The first C prototype was ready months before Chevrolet was actually incorporated.
Chevrolet first used the "bowtie emblem" logo in 1913. It may have been designed from wallpaper Durant once saw in a French hotel room. More recent research by historian Ken Kaufmann presents a case that the logo is based on a logo of the "Coalettes" coal company. Others claim that the design was a stylized Swiss cross, in tribute to the homeland of Chevrolet's parents.
Chevrolet logo, ca. 1943
Louis Chevrolet had differences with Durant over design and in 1915 sold Durant his share in the company. By 1916, Chevrolet was profitable enough with successful sales of the cheaper Series 490 to allow Durant to repurchase a controlling interest in General Motors. After the deal was completed in 1917, Durant became president of General Motors, and Chevrolet was merged into GM as a separate division. In 1917, Chevrolet's factories were located at New York City; Tarrytown, N.Y.; Flint, Michigan; Toledo, Ohio; St. Louis, Missouri; Oakland, California; Fort Worth, Texas, and Oshawa, Ontario. In the 1918 model year, Chevrolet introduced the Series D, a V8-powered model in four-passenger roadster and five-passenger tourer models.
Chevrolet continued into the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s competing with Ford, and after the Chrysler Corporation formed Plymouth in 1928, Plymouth, Ford, and Chevrolet were known as the "Low-priced three". In 1933 Chevrolet launched the Standard Six, which was advertised in the United States as the cheapest six-cylinder car on sale.
Chevrolet Camaro 2010
Chevrolet had a great influence on the American automobile market during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1953 it produced the Corvette, a two-seater sports car with a fibreglass body. In 1957 Chevy introduced its first fuel-injected engine, the Rochester Ramjet option on Corvette and passenger cars, priced at $484. In 1960 it introduced the Corvair, with a rear-mounted air-cooled engine. In 1963 one out of every ten cars sold in the United States was a Chevrolet.
The basic Chevrolet small-block V-8 design has remained in continuous production since its debut in 1955, longer than any other mass-produced engine in the world, although current versions share few if any parts interchangeable with the original. Descendants of the basic small-block OHV V-8 design platform in production today have been much modified with advances such as aluminium block and heads, electronic engine management, and sequential port fuel injection. Depending on the vehicle type, Chevrolet V-8s are built in displacements from 4.3 to 9.4 litres with outputs ranging from 111.394 horsepower (83.066 kW) to 994 horsepower (741 kW) as installed at the factory. The engine design has also been used over the years in GM products built and sold under the Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, Hummer, Opel (Germany), and Holden (Australia) nameplates.
In 2005, General Motors re-launched the Chevrolet marque in Europe, using rebadged versions of the Daewoo cars produced by GM Korea.
The Chevrolet division is currently recovering from the economic downturn of 2007–2010. After sales of General Motors vehicles plummeted and when the U.S Government bailed out the company, GM began developing more fuel efficient cars and trucks in order to compete with foreign automakers. In late 2010 General Motors began production of the plug-in electric Chevrolet Volt (and related Opel/Vauxhall Ampera), which later was announced as the 2012 North American Car of the Year, European Car of the Year and World Green Car of the Year.
Chevrolet bowtie logo
The Chevrolet bowtie logo was introduced by company co-founder William C. Durant in late 1913. According to an official company publication titled The Chevrolet Story of 1961, the logo originated in Durant's imagination when, as a world traveler in 1908, he saw the pattern marching off into infinity as a design on wallpaper in a French hotel. He tore off a piece of the wallpaper and kept it to show friends, with the thought that it would make a good nameplate for a car. However, in a 13-year-old interview with Durant's widow, Catherine published in a 1986 issue of Chevrolet Pro Management Magazine, Catherine recalled how she and her husband were on holiday in Hot Springs, Va., in 1912. While reading a newspaper in their hotel room, Durant spotted a design and exclaimed, "I think this would be a very good emblem for the Chevrolet." Unfortunately, at the time, Mrs. Durant didn't clarify what the motif was or how it was used. Ken Kaufmann, historian and editor of The Chevrolet Review, discovered in a Nov. 12, 1911 edition of The Constitution newspaper, published in Atlanta, an advertisement appeared from by the Southern Compressed Coal Company for "Coalettes," a refined fuel product for fires. The Coalettes logo, as published in the ad, had a slanted bowtie form, very similar to the shape that would soon become the Chevrolet icon. The date of the paper was just nine days after the incorporation of the Chevrolet Motor Co. One other explanation attributes the design to a stylized version of the cross of the Swiss flag. Louis Chevrolet was born in Switzerland at La Chaux-de-Fonds, Canton of Neuchatel, to French parents, on Christmas Day 1878. An October 2, 1913 edition of The Washington Post seems, so far, to be the earliest known example of the symbol being used to advertise the brand.
The first bowtie logo without embedded text first appeared in 1985, as part of the Heartbeat of America ad campaign. In 2004, Chevrolet began to phase-in the gold bowtie that serves as the brand identity for all of its cars and trucks marketed globally.
FutureBrand, a Interpublic Group of Companies company, has been working with General Motors since 2000,[68] who also involved the commissioning of a font that would later sold as Klavika Condensed, as part of re-design of Chevrolet in 2006.
In 2010, General Motors replaced the advertising agency Campbell-Ewald, also of Interpublic Group of Companies, with Publicis Worldwide. Campbell-Ewald had served Chevrolet since 1919.[69] In May 2010 Chevrolet's advertising account was awarded to Goodby, Silverstein and Partners.
As part of the attempt to attract 18-24 year-old drivers, General Motors hired MTV Scratch. Some of the collaboration results include Chevy ads showing their cars skydiving, bungee jumping, doing other stunts. The commercial was produced with consultations from students from UCLA, Pepperdyne and high schools. Some of the footage was later used in Chevrolet Sonic ad titled 'Stunt Anthem' during Super Bowl XLVI.
In March 2012, General Motors announced two competing agencies, San Francisco-based Goodby, Silverstein and Partners (part of Omnicom Group), and New York-based McCann Erickson Worldwide (part of Interpublic Group), will join to form an equal joint venture company called Commonwealth to handle most of Chevrolet's ads. Prior to the joint venture, Goodby, Silverstein and Partners performed marketing in the U.S., including the "Chevy Runs Deep" campaign; McCann handled Chevrolet ads in China, Latin America, Mexico, Canada and other markets. Commonwealth would handle and supervise creative work worldwide out of Detroit for all markets except China, India and Uzbekistan, where GM has joint auto-making ventures. McCann would continue to handle ads in China and India, and Uzbekistan will be contracted as needed.
References
^ GM Heritage Center (1996). "Chevrolet 1911–1996". p. 97. Retrieved April 12, 2011.
^ Automotive News 1 March 2010
^ Chevrolet press release 6 September 2011
^ Polish Armor 1939 - Improvised Armored Car Kubus
^ "Uzavtosanoat website". Retrieved May 4, 2011.
^ Automoveis Classicos – Accessed May 31, 2012
^ "Just Auto 3 August 2011". Just-auto.com. 2011-08-03. Retrieved 2011-11-06.
^ "Corvette Racing official website". Corvetteracing.com. 2008-10-04. Retrieved 2011-11-06.
^ "Popular Mechanics 2011". Popularmechanics.com. 2010-07-30. Retrieved 2011-11-06.
^ "Chevrolet WTCC website". Chevroletwtcc.com. 2006-05-21. Retrieved 2011-11-06.
^ "Chevrolet UK website". Chevroletbtcc.co.uk. 2011-10-27. Retrieved 2011-11-06.
^ Stone, Simon. "Chevrolet". The Independent. Retrieved 2011-11-06.
^ History with a Mystery: The Chevrolet Bowtie
^ Chevrolet Bowtie History
^ The Evolution of the Chevy Bowtie
^ How Chevrolet decided on its iconic Bowtie logo
^ Custom Fonts
^ YOUNG CREATIVE CHEVROLET - CI Guidelines
^ Knockout, the functional family.
