Book Review - Car Emblems: The Ultimate Guide to Automotive Logos Worldwide

by Giles Chapman

Even if you eschew bumper stickers and window decals, your car still is advertising something: itself. Whether it is plugging the manufacturer or the individual car line, your car’s logo is a mobile marketing tool, a moving billboard designed to propagate and sell more cars with the same logo. Author Giles Chapman has researched and compiled Car Emblems: The Ultimate Guide to Automotive Logos Worldwide, a must-read for people interested in automotive marketing, but not geared to gearheads. This comprehensive tome with over 1000 photos goes from Abarth to Zagato, presenting the histories of car branding tools in an interesting and colorful manner. Not just a reference guide, the book’s 125 stories are more about the auto manufacturers and the people who founded them, than the actual vehicles themselves. Many people know that BMW began as a manufacturer of airplane engines, but did you know that the logo is a rendition of a spinning aircraft propeller? Or that Audis sport four rings to represent the 1932 union of four separate companies, even though now they are owned by Volkswagen? Or Chevrolet’s “bow tie” logo was inspired by the wallpaper pattern of General Motor’s founder William Durant’s Paris hotel room? If you want to know why Ferraris have a prancing horse, Chryslers sport a rosette, or learn the trends of modern auto emblems, then this is the book for you.