Chevrolet History: How a Racer's Name Became GM's Biggest Brand

Chevrolet key facts

How Louis Chevrolet and William Durant started the company

Two very different men stood behind the name. Louis-Joseph Chevrolet was born on 25 December 1878 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, and made his name as a racing driver in the United States. His first win came in 1905 at Morris Park, driving a Fiat. William C. Durant was a salesman and financier. He had created General Motors in 1908 as a holding company for Buick, bought Oldsmobile and Cadillac, and was pushed out by the bankers in 1910.

Durant needed a new car company, and a famous racing name helped to sell it. The Chevrolet Motor Car Company was started on 3 November 1911, with Arthur Chevrolet and a group of investors, including William Little and Edwin R. Campbell, alongside the two leaders. The story of Durant's first empire is told in our history of General Motors.

The first product was the Series C Classic Six. A pre-production car existed in 1912, and the first production cars were sold as 1913 models after a show debut in New York in the autumn of 1912. It was a large car: about 4.9 litres, six cylinders, roughly 30 kW (40 hp) and a price of 2,150 US dollars, far above what Durant really wanted to sell.

The 490, the Bowtie and the road into GM

The founders soon disagreed. Louis Chevrolet wanted fast, well-engineered cars; Durant wanted cheap cars in large numbers. Louis sold his share to Durant in 1914 or 1915 (sources give both years) and went back to racing. With his brothers he founded the Frontenac Motor Corporation in 1916, and Gaston Chevrolet won the 1920 Indianapolis 500 in a Frontenac. Louis lost his fortune in the Depression and died in Detroit on 6 June 1941.

Durant's line won. In 1914 the H and L series carried the Bowtie emblem for the first time; whether it came from hotel wallpaper, a newspaper advertisement or the Swiss cross is still disputed. In 1915 the Model 490 arrived, named after its price of 490 dollars, five dollars below the Ford Model T. By our calculation it cost 77 % less than the first Classic Six.

The 490 made Chevrolet profitable by 1916, and Durant used Chevrolet shares to buy back control of General Motors. Chevrolet joined GM as a division in 1917, and a reverse merger on 2 May 1918 completed the deal. Chevrolet trucks followed in 1918. Durant lost GM for good in 1920, but his small company had become the corporation's mass-market brand, in line with Alfred Sloan's idea of "a car for every purse and purpose".

The duel with Ford between the wars

The 1920s and 1930s were a long duel with Ford, and the price war shaped both companies. The biggest step came in 1929: an overhead-valve inline six, nicknamed the "Stovebolt", replaced the four-cylinder engine. A six for the price of a four was a strong argument, and Chevrolet overtook Ford as the best-selling car in America that year. Independent front suspension followed in 1934, and the Suburban, a steel-bodied estate on a truck chassis, appeared in 1935. It is still in production, which makes it the oldest nameplate in the range.

In 1942 Chevrolet stopped building civilian vehicles and switched to war work for the rest of the conflict.

The 1950s and 1960s: small-block V8, Corvette and Camaro

The post-war boom turned Chevrolet into the biggest name in the American car business, and three products explain why.

Corvette and the small-block V8

The Corvette appeared in 1953 as a two-seat sports car with a fibreglass body, and only 300 were made in the first year. The early car with its six-cylinder engine is covered in our page on the Corvette C1.

In 1955 the small-block V8 arrived. It was compact, light and cheap to build, and it gave the Corvette, the Bel Air and later the Camaro their character. The design family has been in production for longer than any other mass-produced engine: the Gen III "LS" version of 1997, first used in the Corvette, kept the basic layout with an aluminium block. In 1957 Chevrolet offered fuel injection for the first time, the Rochester Ramjet system, on the Corvette and the Bel Air.

Bigger range, bigger sales

By 1963 one in ten new cars sold in the United States was a Chevrolet. The Impala became one of the best-selling car lines in American history during the 1960s and early 1970s.

Chevrolet also tried unusual ideas. The 1960 Corvair compact had a rear-mounted, air-cooled flat-six, a layout no other American mass-market car used. The 1967 Camaro was GM's answer to the Ford Mustang, and the mid-size Chevelle carried the muscle-car era; see our Chevelle SS 454 page.

Motorsport helped the brand. In 1960 Junior Johnson won the Daytona 500 in a Chevrolet, the first of 21 Chevrolet wins in that race up to 2010, and in 1970 a Camaro won the first NHRA Pro Stock race.

Crisis, Korea and the 2009 restructuring

From the 1970s Chevrolet faced the oil crises, stricter emission rules and strong Japanese competition, and it answered with smaller cars and imported models. By the 1980s safety had become a selling point: in 1986 the Corvette was the first Chevrolet with anti-lock brakes.

Global expansion leaned on GM's other companies. In 2005 GM relaunched Chevrolet in Europe with cars made by GM Daewoo in South Korea, such as the Lacetti, Aveo and Spark. The story of the Korean maker is in our page on Daewoo Motors. The plan did not last. In late 2013 GM announced that Chevrolet would leave Europe from 2016, keeping only the Camaro and Corvette, and the brand's sponsorship of Liverpool FC ended in 2014 as a result.

The 2008 financial crisis pushed General Motors into bankruptcy and a state-backed restructuring in 2009. GM closed Pontiac, Saturn and Hummer and kept four core brands, with Chevrolet as the largest. The recovery was quick: in 2011, the brand's centenary year, Chevrolet sold a record 4.76 million vehicles worldwide, including 1,175,812 in the United States.

Going electric: Volt and Bolt

Chevrolet entered the electric era earlier than most mass-market brands. Production of the Volt, a plug-in hybrid with a petrol range extender, began in late 2010. In 2012 the Volt and its Opel/Vauxhall Ampera twin sold 31,400 units worldwide, more than any other plug-in car that year, and the family passed 100,000 sales in October 2015.

The fully electric Bolt EV went into production in October 2016; in Europe it was sold as the Opel Ampera-e. The Bolt EUV and a redesigned Bolt EV were shown on 14 February 2021. These cars matter for the brand because they proved that Chevrolet could sell long-range electric cars at mass-market prices, years before many rivals.

Landmark models

Chevrolet timeline

Sales figures and markets today

The United States remains the brand's core market: 1,437,604 Chevrolet vehicles were sold there in 2021. China has been the other large market; in 2009 it took 332,774 Chevrolets, and in 2018 buyers there took 673,376 locally made Chevrolets. In Australia and New Zealand the brand returned in 2018, and since 2021 GM Specialty Vehicles has handled imports there.

By our calculation the 2011 US figure was about a quarter of the brand's worldwide sales that year (1.18 of 4.76 million). The bowtie brand was already more global than its all-American image suggests. The modern range leans on pickups and SUVs such as the Silverado, Tahoe and Suburban, plus the Corvette. All current and past models are listed on the Chevrolet catalogue page, and any two of them can be set side by side with the comparison tool.

What to read and drive: our verdict

For a collector, the most rewarding cars are the 1955–1957 models with the first small-block V8, the early Corvettes and the first-generation Camaro. Parts are easy to find and the engineering is simple. A buyer who wants a usable modern car should look at the pickups and SUVs, where Chevrolet has the most experience. The Bolt EV is a sensible used electric car if its battery history is documented. Readers comparing ages and sizes of these models can use the size comparison tool.