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Chevrolet Centennial Facts - Did You Know?

· Since 1912, Chevrolet has produced more than 200 million cars and trucks.

· Chevrolet became the first value-priced North American car to offer an automatic transmission, when Powerglide was introduced in 1950.

· General Motors pioneered the use of crash test dummies for automotive testing.

· The Camaro Convertible, built at the Oshawa Assembly Plant, is the first car to have a radio antenna installed inside the rear spoiler.

· Cruze is the first car in the compact segment to feature 10 standard airbags and achieve a 5-star overall vehicle score for safety from NHTSA.

· Chevrolet sold 4.26 million vehicles globally in 2010, an average of one every 74. seconds.

. If you lined up all the Chevrolet vehicles purchased in 2010 bumper-to-bumper, the line would stretch 12,909 miles - 51% of the circumference of the earth.

The HISTORY, AND MYSTERY, OF THE CHEVROLET BOWTIE

Chevrolet's bow tie logo has

become internationally famous since it was introduced by company co-founder William C. Durant in 1913. At the time, Chevrolet was a mere two years' old, but already forging a path to become one of the world's major car manufacturers. The introduction of a clear, distinct badge for the fledging brand would instill a strong sense of identity in both the company and its customers alike. It is one that continues today.

However, there are conflicting accounts on its origin including, intriguingly, two from within the Durant family itself. In 1929, William Durant's daughter, Margery, published the book My Father. In it, she told how he sometimes doodled nameplate designs on pieces of paper at the dinner table. 'I think it was between the soup and the fried chicken one night that he sketched out the design that is used on the Chevrolet car to this day,' was her story about the birth of the bowtie.

Over half a century later however, yet another tale emerged, this time recounted in an issue of Chevrolet Pro Management Magazine from 1986. Interviewed 13 years previously, William's wife Catherine recalled how she and her husband were on holiday in Hot Springs, Virginia, U.S.A., in 1912. While reading a newspaper in their hotel room, William spotted a design and exclaimed "I think this would be a very good emblem for the Chevrolet" Unfortunately, at the time, she didn't exactly clarify what the motif was, or how it was used.

That nugget of information inspired Ken Kaufmann, historian and editor of The Chevrolet Review, enough to go searching for its validity. What he found out was fascinating. In a November 12, 1911 edition of The Constitution newspaper from Georgia, USA, he came across an advert placed by the Southern Compressed Coal Company for its Coalettes product, a refined fuel for fires. The Coalettes logo was a slanted bowtie very similar to the shape that would soon become the icon of Chevrolet. Was this the same ? or a similar ? ad that William Durant and his wife would see the following year, a few states to the north? The date of the paper only adds further fuel to the fire, if you'll pardon the pun, for the Chevrolet Motor Company was incorporated just nine days previously.

Within a few years though, the bowtie would begin to emerge as the definitive Chevrolet logo; 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. 'Look for this nameplate' it proclaims above the emblem. And customers all over the world have been ever since.

However, the legends don't end there. Yet another explanation attributes the design to a stylized version of the cross of the Swiss flag, Louis Chevrolet having been born in the country, at La Chaux-de-Fonds, Canton of Neuchâtel, to French parents, on Christmas Day 1878.

Whatever the truth ? which will probably never be fully-known now ? one thing is certain; that the Chevrolet gold bowtie stands just as much today for quality, reliability and affordability as it always has done over the past 98 years.

Chevrolet Turns 100 Years Old!!