Chevrolet, Louis
Louis Chevrolet was born on Christmas Day, 1878 in Switzerland. As a teenager, he was a guide for a local wine cellar. An early account said he was impatient with the slow decanting of wine from cask to cask so he invented a wine barrel pump that speeded the process and was used extensively in the Burgundy region for decades. Later, like many another figure in the automobile world, he started manufacturing bicycles, also inventing a machine to make tires. Then he served an apprenticeship in the budding automobile industry in France, coming to the United States in 1900 as the representative of a French motor manufacturer.
Chevrolet began a career in auto racing in 1905 and his performance over the years earned him a reputation among his generation’s elite. However, he attained his greatest distinction as an engineer and designer of both stock and racing cars.
In 1911, he organized the Chevrolet Motor Company and headed the concern until 1915. He was working with Billy Durant, who had just lost control of General Motors, and the year after Chevrolet dropped out of his namesake company, Durant regained control temporarily of General Motors and took the Chevrolet company into the fold.
Inventor, racing-car builder, and above all, the early speed king who boasted that Barney Oldfield only beat him once “when my car broke down,” Chevrolet was buried at Indianapolis. That is where he won the distinction of having two of the distinction of having two of the cars he built win successively, in 1920 and 1921, the 500-mile speedway classic. He was buried beside his brother Gaston, who swept to victory in the 1920 race and was killed six months later in a speedway crash in Los Angeles.
His name on millions of automobiles, Louis Chevrolet, greatest of the pioneer racing car drivers, dies in comparative obscurity Friday morning, June 6, 1941 in his home in Detroit.
In a letter to "Mr. Chevrolet" Pinky Randall in 1966, former GM board of directors member Charles Stewart Mott reminisced about his friend Louis Chevrolet saying:
"He was driving from Detroit to Flint one day and going through Royal Oak, a constable stopped him and took him to Court for exceeding the speed limit. During the examination, the Judge asked him what his name was and he replied 'Louis Chevrolet.' The Judge said, '$20.00 fine. $10 for speeding and $10 for assuming the name of a noted race driver'."
Comparative obscurity indeed.
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