Car badges: Significance and Origin

Brand identity builds awareness, recognition, authority and most importantly sales. So it is in the automotive business.

Many companies have started with the most humble brand name and emblem and over time astute marketers have massaged the logo to keep it relevant and modern. Perhaps one of the most simple and symbolic car badges is Ford. The script in oval trademark dates back to Ford's beginnings, first appearing (without the oval) on a car in 1904. The script logo was tidied up in 1906, with the 'F' and 'd' having long tails. This logo was used on all cars up until 1911, when it was again revised with the script set inside an oval to allow dealer insignia to be included in the oval band. The first car to carry the now traditional oval logo (without dealer identification) was the 1927 Model A, when the deep blue background colour was added. The global badging of all Ford products, believe it or not, was not accomplished until the 1980s when the oval appeared on every Ford model.

While the branding of a product today is normally associated with focus groups and reams of documentation from advertising companies, justifying their perceived solutions and hefty accounts, many automobile badging had much simpler origins. One example is the Chevrolet "bowtie" logo, which is credited to General Motors founder William Durant. The story goes that when in Paris in 1907, he so much liked the pattern of his hotel wallpaper that he tore off a sample and was to later pull it out of his wallet to create the emblem for the French sounding Chevrolet brand. Many of the classic car company logos have origins as random as Chevrolet. Holden's logo commenced as a man with wings, holding a car, posing against a factory. When General Motors took over the new nameplate became a lion sitting up and pushing a circular stone. What earthly relevance this had to a car is questionable, but the lion badge has stuck, having been placed firstly at the foot of an obelisk on the original 1948 Holden, and today the lion remains in a stylised form within a circle.

Of the current top 100 recognisable global brands, Toyota is the highest place automotive brand at No. 8, Mercedes-Benz (No. 12), BMW (No. 15), Honda (No.18), Ford (No. 49), Volkswagen (No. 55), Hyundai (No. 69), Porsche (No. 74), Ferrari (No. 88) and Lexus at 96. Unsurprisingly, Coca Cola is the most recognisable, with technology and telephone brands filling most of the top ten.

A survey of the "Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands" by Millward Brown (USA) earlier this year placed BMW as the highest ranked automotive brand at No. 25, one ahead of Toyota, whose brand value has plummeted 27% in the past year, according to the Millward Brown data.While Mercedes-Benz, Honda and Nissan scored places on the list, no US automotive manufacturer made it in the top 100.

A recent UK survey to identify the "most iconic" car badge in the world saw Ferrari's prancing horse bolt home, followed by Aston Martin, the famous bull of Lamborghini, Bugatti, Porsche and Maserati.

The origins of the Mercedes tri star was inspired by Gottlieb Daimler who marked a star above his house on a postcard from Cologne posted to his children. Alfa Romeo's logo was representative of the city arms of Milan and the heraldic serpent of the Visconti family, which dates back to the sixth century. Audi's distinctive four circles have nothing to do with the Olympics, but signify the four marques that combined to form the Auto Union in 1932. BMW's distinctive global symbol has nothing to do with automobiles, with the blue and white quadrants being an interpretation of the image of a spinning propeller, while the colours are derived from the Bavarian coat of arms. The distinctive Porsche badge has remained unchanged since 1953, while Ferrari'sprancing horsehas its roots in the insignia painted on the plane of World War I Italian air ace, Francesco Baracca. According to Enzo Ferrari's memoirs, Baracca's mother suggested Ferrari add the prancing horse emblem to his cars as a good luck charm. Every manufacturer has an interesting story behind their badge, and while we are still nowhere near the end of the list, we may revisit the evolution and origins of some other marques another time.

Brian Tanner