100 Fun Facts About Chevrolet

Before cars, Chevrolet co-founder William C. Durant ran America's largest maker of what?

Carriages: his Durant-Dort Carriage Company was the biggest in the US, and he used its money and factories to rescue the struggling Buick firm.

In which country was Louis Chevrolet born?

Switzerland: born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, he later lost his aircraft-engine business in the Depression and went back to Chevrolet as a factory mechanic.

What was Louis Chevrolet's profession before lending his name to the company?

Racing driver: Durant hired him to race Buicks, but after repeated disagreements between the two men, Louis sold Durant his stake in the company.

What did William C. Durant use Chevrolet to do in the 1910s?

To regain control of General Motors: swapping Chevrolet shares for GM stock won back the company he had founded, but he was forced out again in 1920.

In 1913, Durant moved Chevrolet's production from Detroit to which Michigan city?

Flint: Chevrolet's riverside works there grew to employ 14,000 men and became a battleground of the famous Flint sit-down strike.

What was the first Chevrolet automobile called?

Series C Classic Six: it cost far more than Ford's Model T, so under Durant it gave way to much cheaper four-cylinder Chevrolets.

In the most-repeated legend, where did Durant get the bowtie logo idea?

From wallpaper in a French hotel room: that's the story Durant himself told, but his daughter Margery wrote that he sketched the design at the dinner table one night.

Which color bowtie did Chevrolet phase in on all its cars and trucks from 2004?

Gold: the single color didn't hold, because buyers took to blacked-out trim and from 2016 Chevrolet began selling a black bowtie as a style option.

Which GM chief's maxim 'a car for every purse and purpose' made Chevrolet the corporation's volume brand?

Alfred P. Sloan: unlike Ford with its single model, he gave each GM brand its own price level so they didn't compete, with Chevrolet on the bottom rung.

Chevrolet first outsold Ford in 1927, the year Ford did what?

Closed to retool: Ford idled its lines for months to swap the Model T for the Model A, and the Chevrolet boss who pounced, William Knudsen, was a production wizard who had quit Ford.

What nickname did Chevrolet's famous 1929 overhead-valve inline six acquire?

Stovebolt: when Toyota built its first production car, the 1936 AA, it reverse-engineered the engine from a Chevrolet powered by this six.

Which Chevrolet engine did Ed Cole's team design in 15 weeks for 1955?

Small-block: it remade staid Chevrolet as a performance brand, and it soon became the first choice of hot rodders and grassroots racers.

The Corvette was named after what?

A small, maneuverable warship: PR man Myron Scott suggested it, and the badge's US flag was dropped because the flag can't go on a commercial product.

What color were all 300 hand-built 1953 Corvettes?

Polo White: every early Corvette came with a six-cylinder engine and an automatic gearbox, and Chevrolet built just 3,640 in 1954 against the 10,000 it had planned.

In which Kentucky city has the Corvette been built since 1981?

Bowling Green: the plant was once a Chrysler air-conditioner factory, and in 2014 a sinkhole under the nearby National Corvette Museum badly damaged eight Corvettes.

Which Corvette generation was the first to move the engine behind the driver?

C8: putting the V8 behind the driver after seven front-engined generations also gave the car a second luggage compartment up front.

Which engineer is nicknamed the 'Father of the Corvette', though Harley Earl created the car?

Zora Arkus-Duntov: he found the 1953 show car beautiful but underpowered, and his proposals got him hired to help turn it into a real sports car.

Which Pontiac model shared its platform and major parts with the Camaro?

Firebird: the twins ran different engines at first and were dropped together in 2002, but only the Camaro returned, since GM closed Pontiac itself in 2010.

What was the Camaro's best-known codename during development?

Panther: Chevrolet killed it off with a stunt, inviting reporters to the first and last meeting of its 'Society for the Eradication of Panthers from the Automotive World'.

What did Chevrolet famously tell reporters a Camaro was?

A small, vicious animal that eats Mustangs: the quip took aim at Ford's runaway hit, the very car Chevrolet had built the Camaro to fight.

Which Autobot turns into a Camaro in the live-action Transformers films that began in 2007?

Bumblebee: in the original toys and animated series he turned into a small yellow Volkswagen Beetle, but the live-action films made him a Camaro instead.

In which country was the revived 2009 Camaro built?

Canada: GM built the revived car at Oshawa, Ontario, even though much of its engineering had been done by GM's Holden arm in Australia.

The Bel Air was named after a wealthy neighborhood in which city?

The name came from Bel Air, the wealthy Los Angeles enclave; from 1950 to 1952 it was used only on two-door hardtops, before the mid-1950s 'Tri-Five' Bel Airs became icons.

Which Chevrolet's 1964 model became the classic lowrider?

Impala: its X-shaped frame let the body sit unusually low, which made it a natural fit for the hydraulic suspensions that lowrider builders were adopting.

In the 1960s, which group famously leased new Corvettes for $1 a year?

NASA astronauts: Indy 500 winner Jim Rathmann, who ran a Chevrolet dealership near Cape Canaveral, set up the deal, though John Glenn used it for a family station wagon.

Which Chevrolet holds the record as the longest-produced automobile nameplate in the world?

Suburban: the name began as a generic label for wagons that Dodge, Plymouth and others also used, and GM won it as an exclusive trademark only in 1988.

What was unusual about the Corvair's engine layout when it launched for 1960?

Rear-mounted and air-cooled: the layout followed the hit VW Beetle, but it later kept the sporty Corvair Monza from matching the sales of its Ford rival.

Which 1965 book by Ralph Nader attacked the early Corvair's handling?

Unsafe at Any Speed: GM responded by hiring private detectives to investigate its author, which the company's chief executive later admitted under oath to a Senate inquiry.

The 1959 El Camino was Chevrolet's answer to the success of which Ford model?

Ford Ranchero: the copy outlived the original, because Ford dropped its car-based pickup after 1979 while Chevrolet kept building the El Camino until 1987.

Which top-of-the-line Chevelle model fully replaced the Chevelle name in 1978?

Malibu: the Chevelle had launched for 1964 to take on Ford's midsize Fairlane, but its luxury trim ended up outliving the Chevelle name itself.

Under what name was the Nova originally sold when it launched in 1962?

Chevy II: aimed squarely at Ford's Falcon, it used Nova only for its top series until that name replaced Chevy II on every version for 1969.

The Silverado, launched for 1999, took its name from what?

The top trim of the older C/K trucks: Mexico now runs the ladder the other way, selling Silverado as the basic work truck and badging the plusher versions Cheyenne.

The Chevrolet Volt was sold in Europe under which name?

As the Opel Ampera (Vauxhall Ampera in Britain), the Volt's European twin was named 2012 European Car of the Year; the Volt itself was 2011 North American Car of the Year.

Which Chevrolet compact was at the center of GM's 2014 ignition-switch recall?

Cobalt: GM engineers had known of the fault for about a decade before the recall, and the company forfeited $900 million to settle the US criminal case.

Which company's battery cells powered the first-generation Chevrolet Bolt EV?

LG: manufacturing defects in the battery cells it supplied caused fires, and GM ended up recalling every Bolt it had built to replace them.

Which singer's 1950s NBC variety show ended with the 'See the USA in Your Chevrolet' sign-off?

Dinah Shore: she wasn't the first to sing it, since the jingle had aired on Chevrolet's short-lived earlier show Inside U.S.A., but it found real fame on hers.

Chevrolet's famous 1970s jingle grouped the brand with baseball, hot dogs and what?

Apple pie: the formula traveled, so South Africa sang of braaivleis, rugby, sunny skies and Chevrolet, and Holden in Australia of football, meat pies and kangaroos.

Which Chevrolet subcompact, built at Lordstown, Ohio, was Motor Trend's 1971 Car of the Year?

Vega: GM and the Southern Pacific railroad designed it to travel standing nose-down in special railcars, so each car could carry 30 Vegas.

Which refrigerator maker became part of General Motors in the late 1910s?

Frigidaire: World War II halted its civilian production, so the automatic clothes washer it had been preparing only reached buyers after the war.

Which company did Louis Chevrolet co-found after leaving Chevrolet?

Frontenac Motor Corporation: its plan to build passenger cars never got beyond prototypes, and the company filed for bankruptcy in 1923.

In 2005 GM relaunched Chevrolet in Europe selling cars built by which company?

The tagline was 'Daewoo has grown up enough to become Chevrolet.' GM reversed course in 2013 and withdrew the brand from Europe except for the Camaro and Corvette.

Which Bob Seger song played in Chevrolet's long-running truck commercials of the 1990s?

Like a Rock: Seger refused the ad offer for a long time, and he changed his mind only after an autoworker urged him to do something for the car companies.

What did Chevrolet introduce in 1957 as an option on the Corvette and Bel Air?

Its first fuel-injected engine: the costly option lasted only until 1965, when a bigger carbureted V8 gave Corvette buyers more power for far less money.

Which 1980s Chevrolet was a rebadged Suzuki imported from Japan?

Sprint: the little car had begun as GM's own project, which GM judged unprofitable and sold unfinished to Suzuki in exchange for a stake in the company.

From the 2014–15 season, Chevrolet became principal shirt sponsor of which English football club?

Manchester United: the bowtie stayed on the club's shirts until 2021, years after GM had pulled Chevrolet's mainstream cars out of Europe.

Which cheap Chevrolet model's strong sales let Durant repurchase control of General Motors by 1916?

Louis Chevrolet had already sold Durant his share in 1914 after disagreements over design.

Which driver won five straight NASCAR Cup championships in Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolets from 2006 to 2010?

Jimmie Johnson: Jeff Gordon spotted him in NASCAR's second-tier series and brought him to Rick Hendrick, who added a fourth car with Gordon listed as its co-owner.

In the 1990s, Chevrolet's partnership with Toyota produced which Geo-branded compact?

Prizm: it was built at NUMMI, the GM–Toyota plant in Fremont, California, which Tesla bought after the venture closed and turned into its own car factory.

Which 1955 Chevrolet two-door station wagon grew out of a Corvette-based Motorama show car?

Nomad: sales slipped every year and never met GM's hopes, and with a new body due for 1958 the two-door ended after 1957, its name passing to four-door wagons.

In 2009, which country became Chevrolet's third-largest market, behind the US and Brazil?

China: the rise didn't stop there, because in 2010 GM as a whole sold more vehicles in China than it did at home in the United States.

Which natural event wrecked eight rare cars inside the National Corvette Museum in February 2014?

A sinkhole opened under the museum's Skydome before dawn as limestone dissolved beneath the floor. Five of the eight Corvettes were hauled out within a month.

The California plant where GM and Toyota built 1980s Chevrolet Novas now belongs to which carmaker?

Tesla bought the closed NUMMI factory in Fremont in 2010 and reopened it that October. The joint venture's first car off the line had been a yellow Chevrolet Nova.

Which toy car brand launched in 1968 with a dark blue Custom Camaro as its first model produced?

Hot Wheels made the Custom Camaro the first of the sixteen castings in Mattel's debut line. Eleven of the sixteen were designed by Harry Bentley Bradley.

Bankrupt by 1936, Chevrolet co-founder William C. Durant spent his last working years running what business?

A bowling alley with a fast-food counter in Flint was one of Durant's final ventures, and he worked the kitchen in person. He hoped to grow it into a chain of 30.

Which musician scored his first US top-ten hit in 1983 with a song named after a small red Corvette?

Prince peaked at number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 with 'Little Red Corvette', the second single from his album 1999.

Which 1980s TV series used Corvette-based replicas to play its hero's black Ferrari Daytona?

Miami Vice gave Sonny Crockett a kit replica of a 1972 Daytona Spyder built on a Corvette C3 chassis. The car was blown up in the season three premiere.

Which Italian gunmaker sued General Motors over the name of a Chevrolet coupe sold from 1987 to 1996?

Beretta settled out of court in 1989, and the two sides swapped symbolic gifts: a Beretta GTU coupe for a pair of shotguns.

Which symbol was cut from the first Corvette emblem because US rules bar it from commercial products?

The American flag was part of the emblem's original concept, but the United States Flag Code says it cannot be used on a commercial product, so the design changed before production.

Which actor followed Star Wars with the 1978 comedy Corvette Summer, about a teenager's customized car?

Mark Hamill made it his first screen appearance after Star Wars, playing a California high-schooler who trails his car to Las Vegas. Annie Potts co-starred.

On Chevrolet performance models such as the Chevelle and Camaro, what do the letters SS stand for?

Super Sport began as a $53.80 appearance kit for 1961 and grew into Chevrolet's signature performance package, adding stronger suspension, better tires and more power.

Which sea creature shares its name with the badge the Corvette gained for its 1963 second generation?

A stingray lent its name, written as two words, to the 1963 car. GM design chief Bill Mitchell had already used it on a racer he sponsored in 1959.

Which rear styling feature grew large on the 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air, last of the mid-fifties classics?

Tailfins came with a 'twin rocket' hood, tri-color paint and even more chrome on the 1957 cars. Chevrolet had spent a million dollars on retooling in 1956 alone.

What name is given to the class of affordable sporty coupes the Chevrolet Camaro entered for 1967?

Pony car is the label for a market Ford had created and dominated before GM arrived. The Camaro went on sale on September 29, 1966, as a two-door with 2+2 seating.

Which 1990 NASCAR film featured Chevrolet Lumina stock cars driven by hotshot rookie Cole Trickle?

Days of Thunder has a Chevrolet dealership tycoon recruit Trickle, played by Tom Cruise, who helped write the story. His first ride is the No. 46 City Chevrolet.

Which California band's 1962 song '409' took its title from a Chevrolet engine's size in cubic inches?

The Beach Boys recorded it about a car fitted with Chevrolet's 409-cubic-inch engine. Brian Wilson and Mike Love wrote the song with Gary Usher.

Which 1960s TV drama followed two young men crossing the United States in a Corvette convertible?

Route 66 was shot in black and white, so the series used Corvettes in light colors such as Horizon Blue and Fawn Beige. Its first episode featured a 1960 model.

Which marque sat at the top of the five-brand General Motors price ladder that began with Chevrolet?

Cadillac capped what was called the ladder of success. The brands were priced so they did not compete, keeping buyers in the GM family as their buying power grew.

Which kind of electrified vehicle was the Chevrolet Volt, first sold in the United States in December 2010?

Plug-in hybrid describes the Volt across both of its generations. Until December 2018 its family was the world's bestselling vehicle of that type.

Which full-size Chevrolet SUV has been sold alongside its twin, the GMC Yukon, since the 1995 model year?

Tahoe came three years behind its twin: GMC adopted the Yukon name for 1992 to reduce confusion with a smaller model, and Chevrolet followed suit in 1995.

Which executive, later famous for a gull-winged sports car bearing his name, ran Chevrolet from 1969?

John DeLorean was promoted to head Chevrolet in February 1969, and by 1971 the division was selling a record 3 million vehicles a year. His stainless-steel DMC car later starred in Back to the Future.

Which styling feature of the first Corvette coupe was dropped after the 1963 model year?

The split rear window, usually credited to Bill Mitchell, gave way to a single piece of arched glass over concerns about visibility. He said a Bugatti coupe had inspired it.

Which feature at the nose of every Corvette from 1963 disappeared when the C6 arrived for 2005?

Hidden headlights arrived with the 1963 redesign, the first on an American car since the 1942 DeSoto. The C6 went back to fixed units for the first time since 1962.

Which removable roof design did the third-generation Corvette coupe introduce for the 1968 model year?

T-top roof panels came with removable back glass on the new coupe. Coupes soon began a trend of outselling the open roadsters.

Which driver won four NASCAR Cup titles between 1995 and 2001 in the No. 24 Chevrolet?

Jeff Gordon raced the No. 24 full-time from 1993 to 2015, taking the championship in 1995, 1997, 1998 and 2001.

Which Chevrolet personal luxury coupe, new for 1970, was the brand's NASCAR standard-bearer until 1989?

Monte Carlo took its name from the city in Monaco. Stock car teams favored its long hood, which placed the engine further back in the chassis than most rivals.

Which Chevrolet model debuted for 1969 as a shortened half-ton pickup with a removable rear top?

Blazer buyers got a half-cab truck whose rear top lifted off, effectively making it a three-door wagon. GMC sold its own version from 1970 as the Jimmy.

What nickname do collectors give the Chevrolets of the 1955, 1956 and 1957 model years as a group?

Tri-Five covers the 150, 210 and Bel Air lines of those years. Their following is so devoted that entire businesses cater only to these cars.

Chevrolet and Ford were two of America's 'low-priced three' car brands; which marque was the third?

Plymouth was launched in 1928 as Chrysler's first entry in a low-priced field that Chevrolet and Ford had dominated until then.

Which youth gravity-racing event spread across America in the 1930s with Chevrolet as its national sponsor?

Soap Box Derby founder Myron Scott sold Chevrolet on co-sponsoring with the Dayton Daily News. When the carmaker later dropped out, Derby Downs went into a tailspin.

Which NBC western did Chevrolet begin sponsoring when the show moved to Sunday nights for its third season?

Bonanza took the 9 pm Sunday slot in season 3, an hour where Chevrolet had previously sponsored a musical variety show.

Before production moved to Kentucky in 1981, which Missouri city had built the Corvette since the 1954 model year?

St. Louis added the Corvette line in 1953 to a factory that mainly built trucks and full-size passenger cars. The sports car left during the 1981 model year.

Which overseas GM brand built the Commodore sold in America from 2013 to 2017 as the Chevrolet SS?

Holden built the big rear-drive sedan in Australia as the Commodore, and Chevrolet sold it only in the United States under the SS name.

Which brother of Louis Chevrolet won the 1920 Indianapolis 500, then died in a race later that year?

Gaston was killed that November on the board track at Beverly Hills Speedway. No French-born driver won at Indianapolis again until Simon Pagenaud, 99 years later.

Which compact, released as a 1980 model to replace the Nova, was the first Chevrolet with front-wheel drive?

Citation moved GM's X-platform compacts to the transverse front-drive layout its competitors already used. It reached showrooms early, in April 1979.

Which full-size Chevrolet sedan, built from 1965 through 1996, was sold to police forces with a 9C1 package?

Caprice began in mid-1965 as a luxury trim package for a four-door hardtop and became a full line a year later. The 9C1 police package arrived on the base model for 1986.

Which rear-wheel-drive Chevrolet, a twin of the GMC Safari, was launched to answer Chrysler's first minivans?

Astro was sized close to GM's short-wheelbase G10 and kept a rear-drive chassis, with all-wheel drive added as an option in 1990. It was built from 1985 to 2005.

What do the letters in the name of the retro-styled Chevrolet HHR wagon stand for?

Heritage High Roof is the full name of the five-door, front-drive wagon, which Bryan Nesbitt designed and Chevrolet launched as a 2006 model.

Which small Chevrolet SUV, first sold as a Geo for 1989, was a near-identical twin of the Suzuki Sidekick?

Tracker production ran at the CAMI Automotive plant in Ingersoll, Ontario, on the same site as its Suzuki sibling.

What brand name did General Motors give the limited-slip differential it introduced on Chevrolets in 1957?

Positraction spread so widely with Chevrolet's popularity that Americans came to use the word for limited-slip differentials in general.

Louis Chevrolet won the 1909 Cobe Trophy Race driving for which brand, then owned by his future partner Durant?

Buick is also where he learned car design with little formal education, and he is credited as a co-designer of its 1910 racer known as the Bug.

Which Camaro performance package was created for 1967 so the car could compete in the SCCA Trans-Am series?

Z/28 was simply a factory option code, introduced in December 1966. It brought a high-output 302-cubic-inch engine sized for Trans-Am's five-litre class.

Long before its famous 1955 engine, Chevrolet sold the 1918 Series D with which cylinder layout?

V8 power, designed and built in 1917, then vanished from Chevrolet's range until 1955. The Series D unit was one of the first with overhead valves.

Which power-boosting device made the 1962 Corvair Monza Spyder the second production car to offer one?

A turbocharger lifted the Spyder option to 150 hp. Only the Oldsmobile F-85 Jetfire, released earlier in 1962, had offered one from the factory before it.

Which British sports car maker, then owned by GM, designed the LT5 engine for the Corvette ZR-1 of the 1990s?

Lotus, acquired by General Motors in 1986, was approached to help create the world's fastest production car. Its engine shut off half of its 16 intake runners at part throttle.

Dale Earnhardt won six of his NASCAR Cup championships driving the No. 3 Chevrolet for which team?

Richard Childress Racing was run by a driver who retired in 1981 and put Earnhardt in his own No. 3 car. Their first alliance lasted only a single season.

Which singer-songwriter drove a primer-gray 1955 Chevrolet in the 1971 road film Two-Lane Blacktop?

James Taylor was asked to do a screen test after the film's director saw his picture on a Sunset Strip billboard. He was upset at being unable to read the script in advance.

Which hands-free driver-assistance system from General Motors made its Chevrolet debut on the Bolt EUV?

Super Cruise came to the Bolt EUV together with a panoramic sunroof, two options that the smaller Bolt EV never offered.

Which former Ford production man became president of the Chevrolet division in 1924?

William Knudsen spent a decade at Ford before making Chevrolet the highest-earning division in GM. He went on to be president of General Motors from 1937.

Which Pennsylvania dealer ordered 201 Camaros with 427 engines through Chevrolet's COPO system for 1969?

Don Yenko had been fitting the big engines at his dealership until a Central Office Production Order, a channel meant for fleet buyers, let the factory install them on the line.

Which 1965 Chevrolet concept car, designed by Larry Shinoda, set the pattern for the third-generation Corvette?

Mako Shark II was begun in early 1964 under Bill Mitchell's direction and debuted at the 1965 New York Auto Show. The running car was later restyled and renamed.