The History of Supercar Names and Logos - Part One
Ever wondered how the supercar brands settled on their name and logos? Let's take a look at some of the major ones.
Aston Martin was founded in London in 1913 by Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford. The two men met while working for Singer cars and decided to embark on their own adventure fueled by a shared passion for the new breed of highly engineered racing cars. They wanted to make cars that were more powerful than anything in production, but still retain an elegance that would make them beautiful objects as well as race winners.
The name Aston Martin comes from using Martin’s surname and combining it with Aston, taken from a hill climb event in Buckinghamshire, England called the Aston Clinton Hill Climb race. Martin and Bamford designed and built a car which would go on and win the event and decided Aston Martin would be the ideal brand name, combining their personalities with racing success.
The car they produced to win the hill climb was nicknamed the Coal Scuttle as it was seen as being a little crude and looking like a common coal scuttle. Despite its unconventional shape, the car would give the world an insight into the engineering brilliance of the brand.
The iconic winged logo didn’t make an appearance until 1930, when the company needed a more polished identity. Until then, the logo had only moved on from a simple A and M to a winged shape combining the name. The brand then adopted a straighter logo which incorporated the wings to symbolise speed and the idea of racing to the sky, derived from the original hill climb story.
Audi is the result of a series of mergers from earlier automobile manufacturers. These included Horch & Cie (founded 1889) and Audi Automobilwerke (founded 1910), plus bike manufacturers DKW (founded 1922) and Wanderer (founded 1902). The four companies came together to form the Auto Union AG in 1932 with the intention of utilising shared experience and resources, but retaining their identities and models.
The early advertising used the original company logos contained within four circles, which was then developed just using the four circles and this became the Audi logo we know today.
The Audi name was not the better known brand until after Auto Union was bought by Volkswagen in 1964. Up until then, DKW were seen as the more successful brand, but VW wanted to revive the Audi side of the business and helped them develop the popular new model F103.
Another important partnership took place in 1969, with the merger of Audi and NSU Motorenwerke, a car and bike manufacturer with a strong heritage in motorsport. This expertise helped Audi use NSU’s expertise to help develop a series of road and racing cars using cutting edge technologies such as the rotary engine and front wheel drive. Audis excelled and this led to one of the most important developments in automotive history, the all wheel drive Quattro which would go on to dominate world rallying. With the increase in exposure, the whole business was eventually rebranded as Audi in 1985.
Bentley is one of the elder statesmen of luxury performance cars. Founded in 1919 by Walter Owen Bentley, they are recognised as one of the finest car manufacturers in the world and one of the rare examples of a marque able to offer style, class and speed.
The legendary Bentley 3 Litre went into full production in 1921 and achieved success at Le Mans during the 1920s. The drivers were dubbed ‘The Bentley Boys’, a group of very wealthy nobles and playboys who went on to capture the imagination of motoring enthusiasts and help bring the name to a global audience. Their flamboyant lifestyles and personalities enhanced the Bentley reputation, much of which we can be seen mirrored in the brand today.
The Bentley logo has changed little since the first Bentley racing cars. The wings represent a quest to push the boundaries and also provide a nod to W.O. Bentley’s background as a fighter plane designer during the First World War.
The designer of the original logo, F. Gordon Crosby, gave each wing a different number of feathers to make the logo unique, and to counteract any copyists. When Rolls Royce bought Bentley in the 1930’s they adjusted the logo to be symmetrical, giving each wing 10 feathers and giving them a straighter, less organic design. In the 1990s, the logo was tweaked once more, reinstating the asymmetry and the original ‘B’ in the centre.
The Ferrari prancing horse was adopted by Enzo Ferrari after a meeting with the parents of Francesco Baracca, a highly decorated fighter pilot who was killed in action in 1918. They met after a race in 1923 when Ferrari was introduced to Count Enrico Baracca and Countess Paolina Baracca and he learned about their son’s heroism during The Great War. The Countess suggested to Ferrari he use Francesco’s personal emblem of a stallion on his racing cars believing it would give the drivers luck. Viewing it as a fitting tribute to those who lost their lives during the war, many of which Enzo would have known personally, he agreed and the black prancing horse was painted on the Alfa Romeos raced by Scuderia Ferrari (the Enzo Ferrari racing team).
The logo eventually evolved into the one used today when the yellow background was added to represent the colour of Modena, Enzo Ferrari’s hometown and the addition of the Italian tricolour at the top.
Alfa Romeo
The name Alfa derives from the initials of Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili, a Milan based car maker founded in 1910 by Cavaliere Ugo Stella, an Italian businessman who bought the struggling French car company Darracq. Stella turned the new business around and introduced a commercially successful model, the 24HP and then developed a sport version to compete in endurance racing. In 1920, Nicola Romeo, a Neapolitan entrepreneur with a passion for fast cars and cutting edge engineering bought ALFA and renamed his new company Alfa Romeo.
The Alfa Romeo logo combines the red cross of Milan and the green snake of the House of Visconti, the Milanese rulers from the 14th Century. If you look carefully, the snake is actually eating a human figure. It's not entirely certain who the figure is, but is widely believed to be a Saracen or Moorish man being defeated by the Christians during the crusades.
The original logo also included 2 Savoy knots, a figure of eight knot which symbolised the House of Savoy, the then rulers of Italy. After the Second World War, Italy opted to remove the monarchy, so Alfa Romeo swapped the knots for simple lines.
Another symbol used by Alfa Romeo in motor sport and on their sport models is the four leaf clover, or ‘Quadrifoglio’. This originates from their driver Ugo Sivocci who in order to break a streak of bad luck painted the symbol on the front of his Alfa Romeo RL in 1923.
