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Share ThisChevrolet’s successes as a race car driver influenced his career. The booming automobile market and its cunning investors began to notice the daring and innovative Swiss, and among them was William Durant (1861-1947), the financier from Boston. The two met while Chevrolet drove race cars for Buick.
Only a short while later, in 1911, Durant and Chevrolet founded the “Chevrolet Motor Car Company” in Detroit. Durant who previously had founded General Motors in 1908 was an enigmatic character. His biographers portrayed him as a charismatic industrialist in the spirit of the early 20th century, both charming and smart, an enthusiast and an adventurer - not just in terms of finance.
Walter Chrysler once said of him that he could charm a bird off a tree.
Durant’s interest focused not only on Chevrolet’s performance as a race car driver. It was much more his fine French- sounding family name that rang in the financier’s ears. Just as in 1904, when Durant bought up David Dunbar’s ailing automobile manufacturing company “Buick”, it was the name that clinched the deal.
One year after establishing the “Chevrolet Motor Car Company”, the first “Classic Six” rolled off the factory floor in Detroit. The four-cylinder “Baby Grand” and the two-seater “Royal Mail” and the “L Light Six” followed.
In the meantime, Louis Chevrolet proved to be a gifted designer. All four automobiles displayed the distinctive Chevrolet signature, and if it hadn’t been for the legendary “cigar fight” between Chevrolet and Durant in 1914, the Swiss would have probably helped design numerous other automobiles for the company. But sadly the motor cars produced between 1911 and 1914 were to be the only ones personally inspired by Chevrolet.
