VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND EARLIER 1912-1928 A piece of history

The Chevrolet Motor Company was incorporated on November 3, 1911, to manufacture an automobile designed by, and named for Louis Chevrolet.
In 1909, W.C. Durant, former head of General Motors had hired Chevrolet, a colorful race car driver, to design the enginge for the first Chevrolet automobile. After two year's of experiments and tests, the assembly of the new automobile began in a small shop on Detroits Grand River Ave, during March of 1911.
Two other companies, the Little Motor Car Company and the Manson Motor Company, also started production that year. Little manufactured both a 4cyl roadster and a 6 cyl Touring, while Mason produced engines.
Both companies later became a part of Chevrolet.
The familiar "Bow Tie" emblem, first used on the 1914 models, was seen as a pattern on wallpaper by Durant, when visited Paris in 1908.
Thinking of a future name plate for an automibile, he tore a piece of the wall, and took it with him. The name Chevrolet was decided upon not only because race drivers were heroes of the day but also because Durant thought the name had a musical sound and romance of foreign orgin.
Chevrolet Motor Co. became a division of General Motors Corp. in 1918.
At this point it seem's wise to stress the fact that the model year and the calender year have seldom coincided during the history of the automobile industry and as a result there is much misdating of early automobiles.
Today, most new models are announced during the early fall. In the early days, new models became avaiable in late july, or early August. Then, the selling season was from August 1st to July 31st. So in the calender years of 1925 and 1926, for example, there were two series each of Chevrolet K and V models (with no year designation).
As the last of both K and V models were sold during the selling season of the following year, some sources class them as the next years models.
These sources would class the K,s as late 1925 and early 1926, and the V's as late 1926 and early 1927.
In Chevrolet shops, the K's were classed as early and late 1925's and the V's as early and late 1926's.
With the announcement of the Capital AA series for 1927, there was no further confusion as to year.
After some 37 years of association with Chevrolet, I cannot recocile my self to call a K a 1926, or a V a 1927, and with this one exception, all reference to years will be of the model years. . Doug Bell.
Published by Floyd Clymer. L.A.


Keeping Vintage Chevy alive.

Hey Doug, Thanks for the history lesson. Very interesting. :vcca:

Who is Doug? Oh, never mind. Thanks Jay.

I have read this story countless times from several locations and still smile every time I read it. I love modern history from the past 150 or so years.

I agree that reading history is a nice experience and really interesting. Nevertheless the early history of most car brands from those days is not very accurate, and contains quite a lot of mistakes and the information is often difficult to confirm historically. Newspapers from the early days and historical books are the best sources.

In this field I have discovered that the Internet is not a very accurate source and many pages are copies of other sites, bringing the same mistakes to more people. Even GM itself is sometimes is writing wrong details, both in books and on the web. The best historically correct source of early Chevrolet history I have found is this and written by Ken Kaufmann and David Hayward:

http://clubs.hemmings.com/clubsites/chevytalk/ Scroll down and click on the Chevrolet's Early History-link.

The story about the Bow Tie logo from a Paris hotel, the production of 2999 Classics in 1912, and a lot more are unfortunately more likely to be stories than history. Many still believe F**D was first with V-8 in 1932. Chevrolet came in 1917, and offered OHV engines already in 1914. Even editors in big car magazines and Wikipedia make such mistakes.
Chevrolet was founded by Tommy Conner (Swiss-French) and George Mooney JR (American) the Wikipedia tells, and it leaves out the six-cylinder until 1929: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_GM_engines#Six-cylinder_engines. Quite understandable the web must be checked carefully before believing what it tells.

On basis of already collected historical material from different reliable sources and people I am hoping it will be possible to "release" an adjusted and enlarged early Chevrolet history on VCCA's web site before the celebration in 2011, if the club and Mr. Barker agrees to it. The task is huge but the goal may be possible to reach before two years have passed.

In the meantime read the present, accurate history about our beloved brand and the men behind the Bow-Tie-legend.

Doug Bell is the Author of the book.