Читать книгу 60 Years Behind the Wheel - Bill Sherk - Страница 37
ОглавлениеTHESE EAGER PAPARAZZI HAD THEIR photo taken at Queen’s Park, Toronto, in 1919. The Ontario Legislature is just behind them. And the car they are sitting in is easy to identify. The “bow tie” logo on the radiator tells us it’s a Chevrolet.
Louis Chevrolet was a race car driver who gave his name to the car that’s been the mainstay of General Motors almost from the beginning. Flamboyant and high-spending Billy Durant was the irrepressible entrepreneur who formed GM in 1908 by bringing several car companies together. He decided the future of the auto industry lay in consolidation — and he was right.
But disagreements with the other directors led to his being ousted from the company. Determined to regain control, he started a new car company in 1911 to provide the leverage he needed to regain control of GM. The car was Chevrolet, and it put him back in power till he was ousted a second time — this time for good.
Meanwhile, GM introduced the “490” Chev in 1915 (named for its advertised list price) to compete against Henry Ford’s Model T. Some of the early Chevrolets had six-cylinder engines, and even a V-8 around 1917. But these larger engines were dropped when GM decided the best place for Chevrolet was the low-priced mass market.
Henry Ford for years had a virtual stranglehold on that market. It has been estimated that in 1920, half of all the cars on the road in the entire world were Model Ts.
When this photo was taken in 1919, Chevrolet was simply one of several makes trying to pull sales away from Ford. Ten years later, it was a different story. The Chevy went from four cylinders to six in 1929 — and this challenge prompted Henry Ford to terminate his Model A and bring out the first low-priced V-8 in 1932.
