Louis Chevrolet

In 1905, he married Suzanne Treyvoux. The couple was blessed with two sons, Charles Louis and Alfred Joseph.

He died on June 6, 1941, in Detroit and was buried in the Holy Cross and Saint Joseph Cemetery in Indianapolis, Indiana.

He was born on Christmas Day, December 25, 1878, in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, to Joseph Felician Chevrolet, a watch and clockmaker, and his wife, Angelina Marie Chevrolet. He was the second child of the six children — four sons and two daughters — of his parents.

When he was around six years old, the family moved to Beaune, a small town in the Burgundy region of France. When he was a child, his father taught him basic mechanical skills and stressed the importance of precision in the manufacture of machine parts.

As a teenager, he developed an interest in bicycle racing and became an apprentice in a bicycle shop. He started repairing broken bicycles with the help of repair manuals in his spare time.

In 1898, he got a job with the ‘Mors Auto Company’ and was sent to an auto dealership in Montreal, Canada, the following year. He worked as a chauffeur-mechanic for six months and then moved to Brooklyn, New York.

In the United States, he worked briefly for a fellow Swiss immigrant's engineering company, and then moved to the Brooklyn operations of the French car manufacturer ‘DeDion Bouton Motorette Company’. There he was given the opportunity to be a substitute racecar driver for ‘Fiat auto racing team’ in New York City.

Soon he established a reputation as a race car mechanic and driver in the United States and became a celebrity after several wins. He left Fiat to work for William C. Durant, dubbed as the father of ‘General Motors’ who gave him the job to design Buick concept cars which later led the ‘Buick Racing Team’ to many victories.

In spite of having little formal education, he learned car design and started designing his own engine for a new car in 1909. He built an overhead valve six-cylinder engine in his own machine shop on Grand River Boulevard in Detroit, Michigan.

On November 3, 1911, he co-founded the prestigious ‘Chevrolet Motor Car Company’ with Durant and two other investment partners, William Little, and Dr. Edwin R. Campbell.

In 1905, in his first automobile race, he defeated the great American driver Barney Oldfield, and thereafter he set records on every important track in the United States. During his career on the famous brick track he won 10 races and an additional 27 major races elsewhere.

In 1911, he co-founded the Chevrolet Motor Company with Durant, and even with little formal education, he designed and built the first Chevrolet automobile. He also established the ‘Frontenac Motor Corporation’ to build high-performance engine heads.