Billy Durant, founder of General Motors, was not only a superb salesman and promoter. He also apparently loved to develop names and logos for his products.
For years, the story of the Chevrolet bow tie emblem was consistent: Durant had seen the design on wallpaper in Paris. But it wasn't true. For one thing, Durant wasn't traveling to Europe in the 1911-12 period when he was organizing Chevrolet Motor Car Co.
For another, Durant's widow, Catherine, said she clearly remembered where the emblem came from. In a 1972 interview, she told me Durant got the idea from an advertisement in a Sunday newspaper when they were vacationing in Hot Springs, Va.
She said: "We were in a suite, reading the papers, and he saw this design and said, 'I think this would be a very good emblem for the Chevrolet.' I'm not sure he said Chevrolet, because I don't think he had even settled on a name yet."