DIFFERENCE
The Story Behind the Chevy Bowtie Logo
The Chevy bowtie debuted in 1913, and nobody has ever fully explained where William Durant got the design. Two family members told two completely different stories, and automotive historians have never been able to settle it. The shape has stayed essentially the same for over 110 years.
Nobody agrees on where it came from.
That’s the thing about the Chevy bowtie. It’s one of the most recognized logos on the planet, stamped on hundreds of millions of vehicles over the past 110-plus years, and the people who created it never left a clear explanation of where the idea started. What we do have are two competing origin stories, a wallpaper pattern from a Paris hotel room, and a whole lot of family debate that never got resolved.
Here’s what we actually know.
A Logo Born in 1913
William C. Durant co-founded General Motors in 1908, left after a power struggle, then came back in 1911 when he co-founded Chevrolet with race car driver Louis Chevrolet. The bowtie debuted in 1913, the same year the first Chevrolet Classic Six went on sale.
That much is documented. What isn’t documented is where Durant got the design.
The Paris Hotel Story
One version of the story comes from Durant’s wife, Catherine. She said her husband was flipping through a newspaper during a trip to France around 1908, spotted a repeating bowtie pattern in the wallpaper of their Paris hotel room, and tore out the pattern to bring home. He kept it in his wallet for years, she said, before eventually using it as the foundation for the Chevy emblem.
“He kept it in his wallet for years before using it as the foundation for the Chevy emblem.”
That story sounds almost too good to be true. Paris, a hotel, a newspaper, a wallet. And honestly, it might be. Durant never confirmed it himself.
The Virginia Hot Springs Theory
His daughter Margery told a different story. She said her father sketched the bowtie design on a napkin during a family vacation to Hot Springs, Virginia. He’d been working on the logo in his head, she said, and the sketch just came out one evening at dinner.
Two family members. Two completely different origin stories. Both insisting they’re right.
Automotive historians have spent decades trying to settle this. Nobody’s been able to.
The Newspaper Ad Nobody Expected
What researchers did find was a 1910 newspaper advertisement for the Coalettes Company, a coal supplier out of Atlanta. The ad featured a bowtie-shaped emblem that looks remarkably similar to the Chevy logo.
Did Durant copy it? Nobody knows. The timing works out. Durant was actively building his business empire around that period and was reading newspapers constantly. But there’s no proof he ever saw that specific ad, and no documentation tying the two together.
It’s the kind of historical coincidence that keeps automotive researchers up at night.
What Changed Over the Years
The bowtie has never been completely overhauled, but it’s been updated more than 10 times since 1913.
The early versions were thicker, bolder, with a 3D embossed look. Gold was the dominant color for decades. The white version came later. By the 1940s and 50s, the logo started getting cleaned up and flattened out. The basic bowtie shape stayed. Everything around it kept getting refined.
The most recent redesign was in 2020, when Chevy shifted to a flat, two-dimensional logo with a thinner outline and a cleaner gold finish. It was built specifically to work in digital environments, on screens, apps, and websites, where the older embossed versions lost definition at small sizes. The new version scales better. It looks right whether it’s on a billboard or a phone screen.
The shape hasn’t changed. The proportions haven’t changed. That’s what makes it one of the most durable brand marks in American manufacturing history.
Why It Holds Up
A lot of automotive logos have come and gone. Plymouth’s ship. Oldsmobile’s rocket. Pontiac’s arrowhead. All gone.
The bowtie survives because it doesn’t try to say anything literal. It’s not a car. It’s not a wheel. It’s not a road. It’s just a shape, and that shape has been attached to enough good trucks and solid cars and family memories over 110-plus years that the logo carries all of that weight on its own now.
People in central Wisconsin have been buying trucks with that logo on the grille for generations. You see a bowtie at a job site, at a boat landing, pulling a deer camp trailer on a Friday afternoon in November. It means something here.
I grew up in a GM family. For us, the bowtie was never just a symbol. It was family. It stood for where we’d been and where we were headed.
We were on a hobby farm, and the bowtie was out in the fields pulling wagons of grain. It was parked at the farm store in town. It was a way of life. Today, when I see that bowtie, it reminds me of our values as a country.
That’s not branding. That’s just time doing its thing.
The Bottom Line
Nobody knows for certain where the bowtie came from. A Paris hotel room or a Virginia dinner table or an Atlanta newspaper, take your pick. What matters is that William Durant put it on a car in 1913, and it’s still there.
Over a century of American roads, and the shape hasn’t changed.
That’s a pretty good run for a logo that started as a sketch on something that may or may not have been a napkin.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where did the Chevy bowtie logo come from?
The origin is disputed. Two main theories exist: Durant’s wife said he spotted a bowtie pattern in Paris hotel wallpaper around 1908. His daughter said he sketched it on a napkin during a family vacation in Virginia. Neither story has been confirmed, and Durant never clarified it himself.
When did the Chevy bowtie first appear?
The bowtie debuted in 1913, the same year the first Chevrolet Classic Six went on sale.
How many times has the Chevy bowtie been updated?
The bowtie has been updated more than 10 times since 1913. The most recent redesign was in 2020, when Chevy moved to a flat two-dimensional version built for digital screens and small-format applications.
Who designed the Chevy bowtie logo?
William C. Durant, co-founder of Chevrolet, is credited with introducing the bowtie logo in 1913. The exact design origin, whether it was Durant’s own idea or inspired by something he saw, remains unknown.
What does the Chevy bowtie symbolize?
The bowtie doesn’t represent anything literal. Its meaning comes from over 110 years of association with Chevrolet vehicles, American manufacturing, and generations of owners who’ve built their lives around the brand.
Branden oversees marketing for six Chevrolet and GMC rooftops across central Wisconsin. He’s also the creator of the Key2Success Planner, a digital planning system used in 52+ countries, and has been featured on ABC World News, NBC Today, ESPN, and CNN.
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