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Louis Chevrolet and William C. Durant co-founded the Chevrolet Motor Company on November 3, 1911. Chevy celebrates its 100th birthday on November 3, 2011. A seasoned automobile racer and highly respected self-taught engineer, Louis Chevrolet was born in Switzerland on Dec. 25, 1878 and moved to France with his family as a child. He immigrated to North America in 1900. By 1902, his younger brothers, Arthur and Gaston, had joined him. As early as 1905, Louis Chevrolet was winning notice as a fearless driver of the brutally primitive racing cars of the period. He became a member of William C. Durant's famed Buick racing team in 1909. Working with a designer in a rented loft in Detroit during 1910, Louis Chevrolet began to lay out the prototype car that would bear the plans for his name.
The grandson of an early Michigan governor, William C. “Billy” Durant was born in 1861. By the 1890s, he was a highly successful manufacturer of horse-drawn carts that were distributed globally. Durant moved into auto manufacturing when business associates convinced him to manage the fledgling Buick Motor Co. late in 1904. Spectacular success at Buick gave him the wherewithal to found General Motors in 1908. Durant added Cadillac, Oldsmobile, Oakland and other brands to the GM roster, before a 1910 banking crisis forced him out.
Looking to build a new automobile after leaving GM, the irrepressible Billy Durant made a deal with Louis Chevrolet to produce thewell-known racer’s dream car. In 1912, Louis Chevrolet‘s$2,150 Series C “Classic Six,” a luxurious high-performance six-cylinder model, hit the streets of Detroit.
In late 1913, Louis Chevrolet parted company with Billy Durant, leaving behind the rights to produce cars bearing his name. Louis moved to Indianapolis, where he and younger brothers Arthur and Gaston would become legends in the lore of Indy 500 racing. The Chevy bowtie logo, designed under Durant's auspices, appeared for the first time in an ad before 1913 was out. The bowtie badge first appeared on Durant's new, more moderately priced, Chevrolets for 1914.
The Model H line launched with a durable four-cylinder engine that helped build Chevrolet’s reputation as a dependable car. The basic design would power Chevrolets through 1928.
In 1916, Louis Chevrolet drove a Frontenac racecar designed by the Chevrolet brothers in the Indianapolis 500. Four years later, Gaston Chevrolet wheeled a Monroe-Frontenac to victory at Indy. After Gaston was killed in a racing accident, Louis and Arthur formed a company to produce speed equipment for racers that were essentially forerunners of today’s sprint cars.Louis also designed aircraft engines in the late 1920s. Along with millions of others, Louis suffered heavy losses in the 1929 Wall Street Crash. Returning to Detroit, he worked for several years in a Chevrolet factory. Louis Chevrolet died in Detroit, of complications from diabetes, on June 6, 1941. He was 63.
In 1918, the first Chevrolet trucks were introduced; they were a light-duty model based on the Model 490 chassis and a heavy-duty 1-ton chassis.Commercial body builders provided bodies.
Chevrolet formally became part of General Motors Corporation in 1918, while the company was under the direction of founder Billy Durant for a second and final time. After departing GM in late 1920, Durant created Durant Motors. The company produced Durant, Star, Flint and Locomobile automobiles, plus Mason trucks, before falling victim to the Great Depression in 1933. In 1940, Durant, nearing 80 years of age, built and managed a Flint, Michigan bowling alley that was a prototype for a proposed chain. After suffering a stroke while on a business trip in 1942, Durant moved with his wife to New York City, where he died on March 18, 1947.
In 1921, Billy Durant's successor at General Motors, Pierre S. duPont, turned to future GM chairman Alfred P. Sloan to help him evaluate Chevrolet’s prospects. Ignoring naysayers who thought otherwise, Sloan’s research convinced him that Chevrolet could become a globally successful value-priced brand. William S.Knudsen was brought in to run Chevrolet in 1922 and immediately set out to introduce a much-improved Chevy. The result was the well-received Superior model of 1924. By this time, GM was assembling new Chevrolets at a new plant in Copenhagen, Denmark—the first of a number of plants GM would establish to build cars in the regions and countries where they were sold.